Optics & Photography · The Meridian

Ensign Ful-Vue Super pseudo-TLR camera with large brilliant viewfinder above taking lens, collapsible pressed-steel hood, and cast alloy body

1954 · England

Ensign Ful-Vue Super Camera

The camera that taught Britain to look down, not through: a 1954 Ross Ensign pseudo-TLR with a glowing waist-level finder, one shutter speed, and a lineage reaching back to Daguerre's London licence of 1839.

Albumen photograph by Scowen & Co. showing a worn flight of stone steps rising to an ornate shrine-gateway with a makara-arch and guardstone figures, set on a brick terrace among large trees, on the terraced approach to the Sacred Bo Tree at Anuradhapura, Ceylon.

1885 · Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

Sacred Bo Tree, Anuradhapura

A Scowen & Co. albumen view of the terraced steps to the Sacred Bo Tree at Anuradhapura — the oldest human-planted tree on earth with a recorded planting date.

Albumen photograph by Scowen & Co. of the white bell-shaped Thuparama dagoba at Anuradhapura, Ceylon, rising behind many rows of leaning ancient stone pillars and fallen carved slabs, with tall palmyra palms against the sky.

1885 · Sri Lanka (Ceylon)

Thuparama Dagoba & Dalada Maligawa, Anuradhapura

Scowen & Co.'s albumen view of Thuparama — the first stupa built in Sri Lanka — ringed by the leaning pillars of its ancient relic-house and a lost Temple of the Tooth.

1951 · Germany

Agfa Synchro-Box

A German 1950s box camera, complete with its multilingual manual — and found still loaded with an exposed, undeveloped roll of Fuji Provia slide film, a ~20-year-old mystery awaiting the lab.

1955 · England

Coronet Ambassador

A British 1950s box camera by Coronet of Birmingham — 6×9 on 120 film, with Coro-Flash sync — complete, fully working, and with its original instruction booklet.