WEATHERFORD — When Carla and Doug Kerr moved to Weatherford nearly five years ago, they moved with boxes labeled, “To sell in Weatherford.”

As the couple gets ready for another move — this time to Alamogordo, N.M., as they downsize their living space to a house fit for their golden years — they’ve unpacked those boxes at the Doss Heritage and Culture Center.

On Thursday, the couple donated six large format antique cameras to the Doss.

Doug Kerr set up a tripod and one 1915 large format camera in the middle of the museum’s first exhibit room, explaining to Exhibit Coordinator C.B. Williams and Archives Collection Coordinator Delissa Slimp what each part of the camera did and how it was used. The camera was known as a “cycle” camera because it was considered portable enough to take out while engaging in the popular sport of bicycling, he noted. By today’s standards, that’s quite funny — the camera is a little bigger than a toaster — but in the early 1900s, setting up the camera at an outside venue in 30 to 45 minutes was considered fast.

The couple decided not only to downsize their living space, but to move someplace where there were both mountains and desert, said Carla Kerr. They fell in love with Alamogordo, which is only nine hours away by car, she noted. While they will keep a collection of 35 mm and other small cameras, they decided to give away the large format cameras they’ve been collecting since about 2005 or 2006, Doug Kerr said, because they just don’t have room for them in the new house.

Large format cameras have negatives that are at least 4-inches by 5-inches and ranging upward from there. Doug Kerr estimated he paid about $600 for the one camera he took out to show Williams and Slimp on Thursday, but he couldn’t venture a guess as to how much the entire collection was worth. Selling the entire collection wasn’t an option, he said, because those types of cameras often take longer to sell, even on auction websites such as eBay. There are particular collectors who are looking for these cameras and willing to pay for them, he noted, so they don’t sell as fast as other types of cameras.

But, they do offer a window back in time — and they’ll make a great juxtaposition with the Doss center’s upcoming exhbit which features an artist who paints, not with the typical brush and paint set but with a computer painting program, said Williams. The cameras will go up in the Doss Center’s permanent exhibit space on April 7.

“We think this is a fabulous collection,” Kerr said, as he detailed the pieces the couple gave the Doss, including a folding board, where a large format camera could be placed in order to adjust it up or down — to look skyward or at the ground — since the camera itself could not be moved up or down manually like today’s handheld cameras.

“This is a fabulous gift to us,” Williams responded.

The Kerrs began collecting the large format cameras when a friend of Doug’s gave him one that shot 5x7 film as a birthday present. He soon got caught up in the historic value and began researching different cameras, he said.

One of the cameras he collected along the way was a “brother” camera — that is, it was from the same manufactured batch — of the camera Joe Rosenthal used to take his famous Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph, Kerr said. At the time, the mail carrier who brought Kerr his mail had taken an interest in all his camera collecting and would ask questions about each one. When Kerr moved, he gave that camera to the mail carrier, who had been fascinated with it.

“He appreciated it — it took him to tears,” Kerr recalled.

His camera research didn’t always result in such powerful revelations, however. For example, it often included tracing the origins of some cameras with minor detail changes. Many were manufactured by companies that were then bought out by larger companies. When Kodak had acquired so many and had a monopoly on the market, their large format part had to be disbanded and became Graflex. But, Graflex was originally not the name of a company, just the name of the types of cameras.

Now, as the couple prepares to leave — they’ll depart in mid-March — they are happy that their cameras and their years of research will be appreciated by others in the community.

But, they’re already looking forward to the fun they’ll have in New Mexico, including Carla’s participation in the Red Hat Society, in which she has been active in Weatherford and she hopes to invigorate once she gets there.

“We’re going to have a blast,” Carla Kerr said.