After doing some research on the camera, I have speculated that its an E&H Anthony Champion Field Camera, which was produced 1890-1895. Is originally was used to for 4x5 or 5x7 dry plates, but my friend Dave modified the back for wet plate.
As you have probably notice, we have our waterhouse stops in front of the glass of the lens. The Darlot lenses are too early to have slots for apertures! On its own is was an f/3 and we had a hard time getting really anything in focus, so we decided to make an f/5.6 waterhouse stop out of the same materials as the plates we use. It does cause some vignetting, but personally I like it. Also most of it gets cut out when we assemble a portrait into our mattes
If you enjoyed these types of blog posts, let me know!