How I brought a 113-year-old 3D camera back to life!

Finally the transformation from a 113 year old film/plate camera to a modern wet plate camera is finished. I completely redesigned the plate holder again and created a ground glass. To hold the ground glass and the plates in place I 3d printed springs that are mounted with magnets on the lid. And the lid is as well mounted with magnets on the plate holder. A lot of very satisfying clicks when working with the camera. If you missed it, watch part 1 and part 2 of my renovation video.

And there is also a video about what was in the camera when I got it, you can find it here (over 100000 people watched it). Check out the video below for the full walk through:

As Always my designs start in Tinkercad and after that I do the first test prints.

While I was printing, I started to work on the ground glass for the camera. If you are interested, there is another walkthrough about how to make a ground glass. You can find it here.

Grinding the glass is the easiest part, you just have to make sure you don’t scratch the other side.

As you may have noticed in my video, I made many more plates that I will use later for ambrotypes with this camera. After the prints were finished, I finally could mount everything together.

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