The Enlarging, Reducing and Copy Camera
By Thomas Evans. This article was first published in the Graflex Historic Quarterly, Volume 13, Issue 4, and Vol. 14, Issue 1.
The Enlarging, Reducing and Copying Camera.
The 1904 Folmer and Schwing catalog lists two models of the ERC Camera, the “Crown” (Figure 1) and the “Folmer & Schwing” (Figure 2), and describes them as: “being made very substantial and compact, which is a great convenience in shipping or storing away when not in use. The rear section of the bellows is made much longer than the front, which is a decided advantage for enlarging work. The opening in front and center compartments being the same size, makes the lens board interchangeable, and may be used in front as a copying camera, with an extra long draw of bellows or set in the center compartment for enlarging or reducing. The center compartment has both front and rear rabbets, which allows the operator to bring the lens closer to the negative when enlarging”
The difference between the two models was that the Crown had front rise and fall and side shift, while the F&S added tilt to the front, which also ‘oscillated’, or rotated somewhat around the center point. When copying a negative or transparency, the ability to turn the image would allow “an operator to produce straight-lined lantern-slides from very crooked negatives”. The Crown was available in four formats, from 8x10 to 18x22-inch, while the F&S was available in 8x10 and 11x14-inch only. “Reversible Center Adapter” camera backs were offered to step down to smaller formats, from 16x20-inch plates down to 3 ¼ x 4 ¼-inch, or ‘quarter-plate’.
Both cameras were delivered “with a full set of reversible front kits, which hold any size plate from lantern-slide up.” The nesting ‘kits’ were a series of wooden frames in standard formats which accepted the frame of the next smaller format. The 8x10 ERC Camera has an 11 x 11-inch square lens board. The 11x11 kit accepts the 8x10-inch kit, which accepts the 6 ½ x 8 ½-inch (full plate) kit, which accepts the 5x7-inch kit, which accepts the 4x5-inch kit, which accepts the 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ –inch, quarter-plate kit. The kits are held in place by ‘finger springs’ which would also hold the plate in place. Therefore it is possible to fit a glass plate negative in the front of the camera, the lens in the center compartment, and the desired format of plate or film in the back, in order to enlarge, reduce or copy 1:1. The most common use of this camera appears to have been to make positive lantern slides (quarter-plate) from negatives, and a special camera back was offered for this purpose (Figure 3). This back ‘oscillated’ to allow image straitening, as well as having rise and shift.
The 11x14-inch ERC Camera (Figures 4 & 5) has a bellows extension of seven feet, and with an 8 ¼-inch (209mm) lens used with full extension one can produce a seven-times increase in size on the film. That is, a 2-inch long object can be enlarged to 14 inches long on the film. Referring to this camera as “substantial and compact” is rather charming.
By 1937, only the 8x10-inch Crown ERC camera was still being offered, for $210, and the lantern-slide attachment was also still available, for $35. In 1904 the prices were $35 for the 8x10-inch Crown ERC and $12.50 for the lantern-slide attachment.
The ERC camera is shown in the 1947 “Navy Training Course for Photography” as ‘The Copying Camera’. In the illustrations from that publication one can see the ERC camera mounted on the F&S Tilting Laboratory Stand, and a ‘nest of kits’ is also clearly visible. Although the text discusses the 8x10 model, the illustrations appear to be of the 11x14 model.
The Navy text has this to say about the camera: “You will find specially designed copying cameras in all the larger laboratories where this work is done. The camera used most frequently is the 8X10 Enlarging, Reducing, and Copying camera shown in fig. 80.”
“A bed which can be extended to 7 feet 4 inches carries the easel and the copying camera. The bed is mounted on a stand arranged so that it can be swung through an arc of 180 degrees and locked in any desired position. By this means, the camera can be used in either a vertical or horizontal position. The entire camera can be moved along the bed by a crank-operated worm gear.
The body of this camera is in three sections that slide along the camera bed. The sections are connected to one another by bellows. The back section is fitted with an 8X10 removable ground glass focusing screen and accepts 8X10 sheet film holders. The front section is designed so that it will accept a lens mounted on a large lens board. There are sliding, rising, and falling movements which enable you to adjust the composition of the image on the ground glass.
It’s also possible to insert a holder for negatives in the camera front. If you do this, you must place the lens in the center section and then your camera becomes a lantern slide camera or a camera for making film positives from negatives. There’s still another use for the camera when the lens is placed in the center section. In this position, the lens provides a short bellows extension which is necessary in copying large originals or originals which must be produced at a small scale.”
“There is an easel at the forward end of the track that has adjustable clips for holding an original as large as 10 inches square. The total construction of this copying camera insures parallelism between the copy and the film plane, and perpendicularity of the lens axis with the film plane.”
While William Folmer invented many versatile and useful cameras, and Folmer & Schwing manufactured the ERC camera for many years, he did not invent the Enlarging, Reducing, and Copying Camera.
In an article appearing in an 1886 issue of the journal, “The Microscope”, William Henry Walmsley describes a camera which he designed to facilitate the making of photographs through a microscope, or ‘photo-micrographs’ (Figures 6 & 7). He wrote: “The instrument in its present form is simple, compact, and most perfectly adapted to every description of Photo-Micrographic work, with high or low powers. It is substantially constructed of mahogany; the body being square, and carrying a single dry plate holder, which permits the use of a 4 ½ x 5 ½ or 3 ¼ x 4 ¼, vertically or horizontally, as may be necessary… the front of the camera is removable, and carries either a board to which a lens may be secured for ordinary photographic purposes, copying, etc.; or a short cone to receive the tube of the microscope. The bellows are in two sections, with a centre division of mahogany, and a total extension of two feet; which is sufficient to give a range of magnification from 100 diameters to 230, with a one-fifth inch objective…The bellows slide smoothly upon V ways, and are secured at any desired point, by means of a cam operated by a lever, convenient to hand. For greater portability, and also for convenience when using powers requiring only a short extension of the bellows, the frame upon which they slide is made in two sections, which can readily and firmly united by means of a stout thumb screw.”
Figure 6. Walmsley’s Photo-Micrographic Camera.
Figure 7. Walmsley’s Photo-Micro Enlarging, Reducing, and Copying Camera.
In Andrew Pringle’s 1890 book “Practical Photo-Micrography”, published by the Scovill & Adams Company, both Scovill’s ‘Enlarging, Reducing and Copying Camera’, and W. H. Walmsley’s ‘Photo-Micrographic Camera’ (the latter made by the American Optical Company) were advertised. The ERC camera was offered in eight formats, from full-plate up to 20x24-inch, with the option to have special sizes built to order! (Figures 8 & 9).
Figure 8. Scovill’s ERC Camera, 1890.
Figure 9. Walmsley’s Photo-Micrographic Camera, 1890.
E. & H. T. Anthony’s 1891 catalog offered the Climax Enlarging, Reducing and Copying Camera in nine formats, from 4x5-inch up to 20x24-inch. The cut used in Anthony’s catalog (Figure 10) is surprisingly like that used in the Scovill advertisement shown above (Figure 8).
Figure 10. Climax ERC Camera, E & TH Anthony Co, 1891.
The ‘simple directions’ which they appended are the only specific directions I have found for the use of the ERC Camera. The catalog also provided an interesting table for determining enlargements (Figure 11) ‘copied from the British Journal Almanac for 1882’.
Figure 11. Table for Enlargements.
Directions For Use.
“To copy a negative in the natural size, place it in the kit on the front of the camera and button it in. Attached to the center frame of the camera is a division upon which, on the side toward the camera front, a lens is mounted. Suppose this to be a quarter-plate portrait lens, the focal length of which we suppose to be 4 inches: draw back the center frame and the lens twice the focal length of the lens (8 inches); slide the back frame with ground glass the same distance from the center frame. To enlarge with the same lens to eight times the size of the original, the center of the lens must be 4 ½ inches from the negative, and the ground glass be 36 inches from the center of the lens. To reduce in the same proportion, reverse, and have 36 inches from the center of the lens to the negative, and from the center of the lens to ground glass 4 ½ inches.”
In his 1902 book, “The A B C of Photo-Micrography” W. H. Walmsley reiterated his design of this camera.: “Some twenty years ago, when no suitable camera for photo-micrography could be found a any dealer’s, I devised a form which the Scovill Manufacturing Company, of New York, made for me in the most satisfactory manner, and which is today, after constant use in all these years, as good as when it left their shop… The bellows are in two parts, with a central box serving the double purpose of support to prevent them from sagging in the middle and carrying a lens for making photo-micrographs, lantern slides or enlargements on bromide paper. This central box and the rear portion of the camera, with the focusing screen, slide freely and independently upon V-shaped ways, and may be firmly fixed at any desired point… the front being immovably attached to the camera bed” The lens board can be moved from the central box to the front of the camera “when it is desired to use the camera for copying, and the entire front can be shifted several inches vertically or horizontally.” He goes on to say “This simple and most efficient camera was early placed upon the market by the Scovill & Adams Company, under the somewhat lengthy but expressive title of ‘The Walmsley Enlarging, Reducing and Copying Photo-micrographic Camera,’ …It is made in two sizes (6 ½ x 8 ½ and 4 ¼ x 5 ½) each size carrying smaller plates, if desired.”
This statement explains how Scovill came to make the ERC line of cameras, and since Scovill and Anthony, both based in New York, appear to have been on good terms (the two companies merged in 1901), one can imagine that they worked out a deal to both sell what was essentially the same line of cameras, but it is a mystery to me how Folmer & Schwing came to be a major manufacturer of the ERC Camera, which they were at least by 1904, that is, even before being absorbed by Eastman Kodak Co.
W. H. Walmsley, 1830 - 1905, was well known to microscopists as a skilled photo-micrographer. He was a member of the Royal Society of Microscopists, a charter member of the American Microscopical Society, and, in 1885 at least, he was the Secretary of Microscopy and Histology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 1884 he became the sole American agent for R & J Beck & Co. of London, selling microscopes and other optical equipment in Philadelphia, PA. Apparently he was in a good position to work with various camera manufacturers to engage them give form to his ideas.
Mr. Walmsley finished his description of his camera with this assessment of its capability: “It is perfectly adapted to each of several different requirements. For simple negative-making in connection with a microscope or for copying engravings, etc., with a photographic lens, its long bellows extension, simplicity and smoothness of working leave little or nothing to be desired. In making enlargements on bromide paper or lantern slides by reduction, it is equally useful…in still another direction its adaptability to a purpose will be found equally satisfactory. I refer to the photographing under very low amplifications (less than ten diameters), of macroscopic objects too large for the field of an ordinary microscope objective, -- to which I have ventured to give the name of photo-macrography…”
So capable was this camera that it continued to be used long after manufacture ceased. In 1978 I was working for a commercial photofinishing lab that sent me to the Kodak facility in San Francisco for a class. Set up on a table there was an 8x10-inch Enlarging, Reducing and Copying Camera, still in commercial use about 100 years after Mr. Walmsley had first thought it up.
Thomas Evans. May 2008.
References:
Anthony, Edward. Reprint <1980. “Illustrated Catalogue of Photographic Equipments and Materials for Armateurs 1891”, E. & H. T. Anthony & Company, John Polhemus Printer, New York, NY. Reprint by the Photographic Collectors Newsletter. Morgan & Morgan Inc. NY. 22-23.
Folmer & Schwing Catalog. Reprint 1977. “Graflex and Graphic Cameras 1904”, Western Photographic Collectors Association, Creative Publications Las Vegas NV. 67-70.
The Folmer Graflex Corporation. 1937. “Consumer Price List”, Folmer Graflex Corporation, Rochester, NY. 19.
Kingslake, Rudolf, 1974, "The Rochester Camera and Lens Companies", Rochester NY, Photographic Historical Society. Accessed via internet April 2008. http://www.nwmangum.com/Kodak/Rochester.html
Navy Training Courses. 1947. “Photography”, Navy Department, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington D. C. 362-365.
Pringle, Andrew. 1890. “Practical Photo-Micrography”, Scovill & Adams Company, New York, NY. v-vi
Walmsley, William Henry. 1886. “The Microscope”, Volume VI, No. 2, Ann Arbor, MI. 49-51.
Walmsley, William Henry. 1902. “The A B C of Photo-Micrography”, Tennant & Ward, New York, Mount Pleasant Press, Harrisburg PA. 23-26.
