Quarter Size Glass Plates in Imperial Special Rapid Box

The Imperial Plate Co. Ltd was a British Dry Plate manufacturer founded in 1890s. In 1918 it became part of Ilford which continued producing dry plates under the Imperial brand until at least 1934. Their own factory closed in 1933. The Imperial Handbook 1919 contains the following description of Special Rapid plates:

This plate is the best ever made for amateur photographers, probably the most popular plate ever produced.

The plates were usually sold by the dozen and this box contained 10 plates. The serial or batch number on the box is 7804B. There are no markings on the box itself but most plates have numbers written in pencil on the emulsion side. They appear out of order. The negatives are in fair condition though the emulsion has started to silver on many of them.

The exposure was very inconsistent: some of the plates are heavily overexposed while the negative with two colts and a man is very thin (underexposed). A light leak is apparent on many plates and could come from either a faulty plate holder, a leaky camera back or a pin-hole in the camera bellows.

The portraits are taken with the camera at the photographer's chest level. Most small plate cameras (or hand cameras as they were called at the time) could be used in such configuration without a tripod. This was possible if the shot was framed using a brilliant finder and focusing was achieved by the distance scale. To be successful with this technique one must be very proficient with the camera. The choice of this shooting method, in favour of setting the camera on the tripod and using the ground glass for focusing, might explain a lack of sharpness and unusual framing evident in these negatives.