Photography of Matthew B. Brady

[mubeen_mughal]

I am wondering if anyone would know what lenses Matthew B. Brady may

have used for his photographs of the American Civil War, and what

settings he may have had to use.

[pico_digoliardi]

Look to the cameras of the era, and it's likely that "Brady" used several different setups.

 

See, Brady didn't do a lot of that work. He had an angency, a crew of photographers that did the work. He also purchased negatives from independent photographers who did war images, but he got the bylines.

[brian_ellis16]

Matthew Brady actually was much like the owner of a franchise or a studio today. He personally made very few of the "Matthew Brady" Civil War photographs. Instead, a group of about 20 other photographers made the photographs while employed or retained by him. So you're actually asking about lenses and settings used by a whole bunch of different photographers when you ask about "Matthew Brady." The cameras they used ranged in size from 8x10 to 16x20 and they also used stereographic cameras. However, I don't know what lenses they used on these cameras. Exposure times were measured in seconds because the wet plates were very slow, which is why none of the photographs show any battle or other action.

[kelly_flanigan1]

It is interesting how history is always changing. When I grew up Matthew Brady was called a craftsman, one who worked with Samuel Morse's wisdom to work with daguerreotypes. He shot portraits of many of the pre Civil War presidents HIMSELF, and had a gallery in Washington DC. A decade before the civil war his eyesight was about really about shot, he had assistants for his gallery. He organized a huge group of photographers to shoot the civil war effort. He did shoot a few images during the war, but had others shoot the bulk of the images. Just because the man was about blind during the civil war is no reason to downplay his huge effort in getting things in the war photographed. Heck maybe today it is fashionable to discount achievements of the blind.

[kelly_flanigan1]

For Portraits they had this wire frame which held a persons head still, for the super long exposures, upwards of a minute.

[brian_ellis16]

"Just because the man was about blind during the civil war is no reason to downplay his huge effort in getting things in the war photographed."

 

Where do you see his efforts being downplayed?

[randall ellis]

Brady had a couple of studios, which were quite well known at the time, where he himself made images. He himself photographed during the civil war, but he did hire large numbers of photographers so that he could cover the entire conflict.

 

I can't recall the title of the book, but Brady published a book of prominent Americans which was made up of images that he himself took in his studios. His equipment, according to all my resources, consisted of barrel lenses mounted on a large variety of cameras. Which lenses are not clearly recorded, at least in the sources that I have in my collection.

 

Due to financial problems, most of his ventures ended poorly and so many of his negatives and prints were sold at auction or thrown away, and therefore are now lost to us. However, there are numerous books, many out of print, that document his efforts. Unfortunatley, none of these I have read have much in the way of details about the equipment he used other than to talk about which photographic process he was using.

 

- Randy

[mubeen_mughal]

Thank you all for your contributions.

 

I think he may have used large format lenses with the equivalent perspective of 35mm, 50mm and perhaps 135mm in 35mm.

 

The reason I am asking this question is that in a lot of the photos that I have seen, the depth of field is so shallow; yet I know that the aperture of his lenses must have been no larger than f/5.6, hence the question that how can such slow lenses have such little depth of field.

[amund_aaeng]

Try doing a portrait with f/8 on a a 8x10 or lager camera, then you`ll learn about shallow DOF. As format increases the DOF gets shallower.

[jason_greenberg_motamedi]

"... I know that the aperture of his lenses must have been no larger than f/5.6..."

 

How do you know this?

 

The Petzval Portrait lens, which Brady and company certainly used for portraiture, were

roughly f/3.7. Considering that his cameras were quite large, at least 8x10, his portrait

lenses were at a minimum 16" (405mm), if not longer. DOF with lenses this fast and long

is tiny.

[mubeen_mughal]

Jason,

 

Ha ha, we learn something everyday. I should have said I imagine that they must have been f/5.6 or smaller.

 

So what would you say is the 35mm equivalent of a 16" on an 8X10?

 

Thanks.

[mark_sampson]

Mubeen, 16" (400mm) on 8x10 would correspond to 60mm on 35mm, more or less. It's hard to make a direct comparison because the proportions of the two formats are different.