Rochester Optical

Rochester Optical – Brand Review & Overview

Rochester Optical Company was a pioneering American camera maker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, best known for its Premo and Poco lines of plate and field cameras. Based in Rochester, New York, the company produced lightweight wooden view and folding cameras in sizes ranging from smaller plate formats up through 6½×8½ and 8×10, giving professionals and serious amateurs capable tools well before Eastman Kodak absorbed the brand.

Signature models like the Premo View and various Premo field cameras offered triple‑extension bellows, reversible backs, rising fronts, and front and rear swings, making them surprisingly full‑featured for their time while still being relatively portable. Today, Rochester Optical cameras appeal mainly to collectors and historically minded large‑format photographers, who value their place in American photographic history and their classic brass‑and‑wood aesthetics as much as their continued usability with standard sheet-film holders and compatible lenses.

As you explore this brand on a vintage large-format site, consider whether you want a Premo or similar Rochester Optical field camera as a functional antique, a restoration project, or a display piece that still can be taken into the field. Choosing the right Rochester Optical model lets you work with, or simply appreciate, one of the early cornerstones of the U.S. camera industry—a tangible link to photography’s formative decades.