eBay

Here is an impressive very large early brass bound Meagher Wet Plate camera. The camera makes an amazing display piece. It comes with a ground glass insert with an image area of 10 1/2x 10 1/2 and a wet plate holder. The holder has inserts so it can shoot with 5x7 or 8x10 size plates. The bellows look nice but do have light leaks when I checked them with a flashlight. It has a very large early unmarked brass lens with a flip up cover over the front opening of the lens. The lens has a rear element that looks like a achromatic landscape lens that throws a nice image on the ground glass but does not cover the full plate. The lens has no flange but is just screwed directly into the lense board. If you wanted to take large portrait pictures with it you would need to mount your own lens. Both the ground glass and plate holder can fit in the camera when on display but the camera will only close up when just the ground glass insert is installed. The camera shows much wear and is missing some screws and has several cracks. It is missing the threaded focusing rod that would extend on top of the bed to a small crank which is also missing. I have been focusing the camera by manually moving the rear standard back and forth. It is also missing some parts of the bottom bed where when closed the side boards would have screwed into. I am selling the camera "as-is" as an antique for display. The camera is quite large. Folded up its measurements are approx 15" x 16" x 6" and with the lens and ground glass insert it weighs approx 18 lb. Please look at the pictures as I have included many above. Check out my other auctions for many other antique cameras and brass lenses. Buyer pays shipping and the shipping quote includes insurance.