What kind of camera did they use during the civil war?

Answer 1

The wet plate (or colldion) process was in use at the time. This involved coating a glass plate with a solution that when slightly gelled, was immersed in silver nitrate. While still wet, the plate had to be exposed whithin 15 minutes, then developed before it dried. The process was cheaper than the daguerrotype (more expensive chemicals on a copper plate, long exposure times and a single positive image), and produced a glass negative which could produce many prints with great detail. Some of the cons of this process was that the coating was only sensitive to blue light, and the silver nitrate could get contaminated (the plate would fail to produce an image) and clog up cameras and plate holders. It also provided little time to produce the exposure and required a portable darkroom to coat, expose and develop the plates.

Answer 2

The role played by Photography in the American Civil War (1861-1865), and every war since, was to provide the most accurate historical record possible of the people, the personalities, the places and things and, indeed the Horror of the war. No prior war had been recorded in such detail from start to finish. Photographs revealed warfare and its historical matrix with an intensity never before experienced by civilians. All photographs, without exception are literally moments frozen in time. Ansel Adams thought that, therefore, all photographs had intrinsic historical value, regardless of subject matter or quality.

The Civil War was not the first war to be photographed (Roger Fenton did that in the Crimea in 1855), but it was the first to be photographed intensively. Photography in the United States was only 21 years old when the Civil War began, but it had advanced to a point where relatively inexpensive photographs on glass or metal could be made to provide loved ones with a keepsake of a soldier off to the battlefield. It's estimated that more than a million of these little images were made, and many of them are still extant since the process was very permanent.

Photographs made in the field during The Civil War have only recently begun to be seen as what they really are: immeasurably valuable tools for historical research. Photographers and firms such as Mathew B. Brady, Alexander Gardner, James Gardner, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, George S. Cook and the E & H.T. Anthony Co. made an estimated 5000-plus battlefield, camp and outdoor photographs, many of which survive. Field photographers may sometimes have been guilty of posing after-action pictures, but it must not be forgotten that the snapshots we take today were impossible with the equipment and processes of the mid 19th Century.

Answer 3

Most of the cameras used during the Civil War were called Wet Plate cameras. They were large wooden-body cameras that were mounted on wooden tripods and used heavy wet-collodion glass plates for what we would call film today. After the camera was set up and the subjects posed; to "take" the picture the photographer removed a cap from the lens and replaced the cap when the necessary time was up. Depending on the amount of light and the lens he had, it took from 20 seconds to several minutes to expose the picture.

Answer 4

Wet plate was the most common.

Answer 5

Flash Photography (Flash Camera's)