BoxCameras.com - Two 1800s brass portrait lenses: Holmes, Booth & Haydens, and Fowler & Slater

Two brass barrel portrait lenses
Holmes, Booth, & Haydens, New York - circa 1855-1870
Fowler & Slater, Cleveland, OH - 1870s-1880s

These two brass lenses were purchased together, although each represents
a slightly different time period in professional studio photography.

The Holmes, Booth, & Haydens lens (left, above) dates to the heyday of the wet-plate photography period - 1855 through about 1870. Holmes, Booth, and Haydens lenses were well-known and respected for their quality. They were a company that had supplied lenses to daguerreotypists before wet-plate photography supplanted the daguerreotype process in the mid- to late-1850s.

The lens features radial-drive focusing (knob on left) and a large hood to minimize reflections. Its original lacquered finish shows considerable wear, although optically the lens is still in excellent shape. This lens undoubtedly earned its keep on a studio camera of the mid-1800s.

The optical length of the lens (10 inches, as suggested by the serial number 10.216) suggests that the camera on which it was used took a full-plate (6½ x 8½ inch) negative.

Detail of engraving on Holmes, Booth, & Haydens lens barrel

Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that the lens barrel has been cut to accommodate Waterhouse stops - a light-controlling feature that took off in 1853. Waterhouse stops were flat metal pieces with specific sized holes cut into them. A set of these stops gave the photographer better control over the exposure and also over depth of field. Prior to the invention of these stops, most lenses had to be used "wide open", that is, at their most light-admitting setting.

The two brass lenses compared with an 1880s-1890s Scovill Waterbury
lens from a Putnam 'Marvel' 5 x 8 inch tailboard camera

The Fowler & Slater lens (right, above) likely dates to the 1870s or 1880s. It is definitely newer than the Holmes, Booth, & Haydens lens, and different in two key areas:

1) The lens does not have a focusing capacity - focus would have had to be achieved by changing the position of the lensboard or plateholder, rather than physically moving the glass elements inside the barrel of the lens.

2) This lens has an iris diaphragm for f-stops which is set by an exterior ring. Note in the image below the engraved script letter 'f', and numbers below it ranging from 8 to 64. When the knurled brass ring was turned, a diaphragm inside the lens opened or closed to control the amount of light let through.

In this next image, the lens is set to f8:

This image shows the lens set at f32:

The original brass lacquer is far more intact on the Fowler & Slater lens than that of the Holmes, Booth, & Haydens lens. This is likely to due to two factors: 1) Age - obviously a lens that is 20 years older is likely to have more wear, but the difference in wear could also be explained by 2) Usability - the Holmes, Booth, & Haydens lens has radial focusing, and is therefore much more desirable to a photographer.