Half plate daguerreotype. Toronto, Canada: Dr. Mike Robinson at Century Darkroom, 2025. Mount verso features Robinson’s printed studio label, inscribed with the title in ink and signed by the artist: "Première Optique / [Signed] Mike Robinson / 2025." Housed in a custom reverse-painted black and gold passe-partout glass mat with an archival cream presentation mount and deep purple textured perimeter binding.

The composition of the photograph serves as an homage to the dawn of photographic optical engineering. Arranged in exquisite focal clarity across a tabletop are:

• An early American Boston Box camera fitted with a pre-Petzval lens (circa 1840).

• An early French Lerebours daguerreotype plate lens (circa 1839–1840).

• An original Voigtländer daguerreotype Petzval lens.

• Two early French optics: a Jamin landscape lens and a Darlot Verres Combinés portrait lens.

Large-format half plate daguerreotypes are technically challenging to polish, sensitize, and expose, and this work achieves a level of tonal depth, reflection-free clarity, and razor-sharp mechanical resolution that rivals the finest 19th-century masterworks. Paired with Dr. Robinson’s world-renowned expertise as Daguerreian Society President and living master of the medium, this piece represents a pinnacle offering for collectors of both modern and early photography.

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Mint condition. The plate displays flawless, deep mirrored surfaces with exceptional tonal gradation, pristine highlights, and pinpoint sharpness across every brass barrel, thumbwheel, and lens inscription.