“New” lenses in the wet plate collodion world always mean “new to me” and not new new! I recently found a lens that was recovered from a barn. It is a Cooke 8in Anastigmat lens. I pulled it apart and did a good cleaning. It had a little fungus inside but the glass had not gotten pitted yet. I 3D printed a lens board and tried it out on my Primer 12×12 camera.

I made a video of the fixing step of the first tintype…

Here is a still image of that plate. It turned out really nice!

Just for fun, here is what I see at the back of the camera when focusing the shot. Everything is upside down and backwards!

Look for more images with the Cooke lens in the future!

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