I enrolled as a medical student at one of the great teaching hospitals of London University in 1949, immediately after ending my two years of compulsory military 'National Service' in the Royal Navy. I had an ex-serviceman's grant to pay for fees and existence in London. I lived rather frugally, sharing a room with a fellow undergraduate in 'digs' in a terraced house in south-east London. I was able to afford the occasional luxury such as a pint of beer with friends once or twice a week and took a girlfriend to a cinema from time to time. This area of London - Catford, Lewisham, Peckham and Camberwell - was the home of working class Londoners, who had little money to spare, and who often rented out rooms to students to help with their own finances. The shops stocked inexpensive food and goods, at a time when some food and clothing was still controlled by ration books and coupons. So it was possible to pick up bargains in many of the second-hand shops.

During my second or third year in London I saw an old plate camera for sale in the window of a 'bric-a-brac' shop. I had an old "Ensign" roll-film camera at the time, one of my father's cast-offs. I had used it for several years at school and while in the Navy, though film was hard to come by then and I often had to make do with war-surplus roll-film of dubious quality. The idea of learning to use a plate camera appealed to me. I have no recollection of how much I had to pay for it, but it cannot have been very dear, and I managed to persuade myself that I could afford it. I suppose that I had to forgo several beers and visits to the cinema for some weeks afterwards.

The camera came in a nice black leather case, with four wooden dark slides - there should have been six, so two were missing. Inside the case was the inscription: 'Lizars "Challenge" Camera'

 
and on top of the camera was the same name, with some British town names. The firm of J. Lizars was based in Glasgow at the start of the twentieth century.

I soon discovered how versatile the camera was. When it is withdrawn from its housing, it clamps onto a moveable slide with a rack and pinion focussing mechanism. The fold-down platform carries an ivory scale of focussing distances. The slide could be racked out much further for close-up photography. In this photo the rack and pinion focussing knob is on the far side of the platform. I have not racked the lens out far, in deference to the age of the red leather bellows, which is still light-tight. The platform also has a small circular spirit-level (visible between the front of the camera and the brass platform stay) to help level the camera accurately.

The lens assembly is on a brass frame that allows it to be elevated and tilted - a "rising front" - for architectural photography. One sets the base platform to be horizontal, by using the small spirit level. This ensures that the plate is vertical, so that there is no perspective distortion when photographing buildings from ground level. The lens is raised and tilted to compose a sharp image on the focussing screen. I used this facility a few times to photograph some places in London.

The image is composed and focussed on the ground glass screen, which is then removed and replaced by one of the wooden dark slide boxes, already loaded (in the darkroom) with a suitable glass plate. This camera was built for standard "quarter-plate" glass negatives: 3.25 x 4.25 inches. These glass plates, coated with emulsion, were at one time made by all the major photographic materials manufacturers. I had to learn how to open the boxes in total darkness, sense which side of the glass had the emulsion on it, and load them into the wooden dark slides. Each dark slide held two plates.

When all was ready, with the image composed and focussed, and the screen replaced by a dark slide locked into position, one slid out the wooden cover of the forward-facing side of the slide, so that the emulsion side of that plate was open to the lens and its shutter. Shutter speed and diaphragm aperture were set, and the shutter was clicked to expose the plate and capture the photograph.

 
This shows the details of the Bausch & Lomb lens and the shutter and aperture mechanism. The aperture numbers, from 4 to 128, are from an older system than the f-numbers that we use today. It is probably the 'Uniform System' of the 1880s, equivalent to f/8 to f/45. This Bausch & Lomb lens probably dates the camera to about 1905 - 1910. I understand that sometime after 1913 Kodak shutters were fitted to the Lizars Challenge model. The whole lens & shutter assembly is designed to be easily removable and could be replaced with a different assembly, or a plain wooden front (see below).

 

Alas, glass quarter plates for general photographic use ceased to be made about 30 - 40 years ago. Two of my dark slides still have plates in them, and this box of Ilford SR Pan plates has a couple still in their wrapping, but they are all so old that it is doubtful if they are still useable. I used the camera from time to time from the early 1950s until some time in the 1960s. At first I used to develop the plates at home, in a darkened bathroom, and made contact prints from them. Later I had access to a scientific laboratory darkroom, which made things easier. During part of my final degree year I adapted the camera for photomicrography. The lens assembly is easily removable. I made a plain wooden substitute, with a light-tight velvet lined hole that was a snug fit around a microscope draw-tube. It worked well for photographing histological specimens that I had prepared as part of my final year in the B.Sc. course, and it was fun to be able to present these prints, from a rather make-shift setup, as part of my course finals.

Martin H Evans. 20th September 2010.