This portion of the museum contains large format cameras which have negatives that are usually at least 4 x 5 inches. Large format cameras generally use sheet film instead of a roll of film. Usually two sheets are put into a film holder. Each holder contains a dark slide on each side. After viewing and focusing, the film holder is put in the back of the camera. A dark slide is lifted out. The shutter is fired and the exposure made. The dark slide is put back into the holder. The holder is then flipped over to use the other sheet of film which is exposed in the same way. Two photos can therefore be made with each holder. The film must be put into the holder in complete darkness. Also, the film must also be removed from the holder in complete darkness. This is often done in a film changing bag. The bag is light tight. One end of the bag is zippered. You unzip it to place the film holders and film in. It is then zipped up again to prevent light from entering. The other end has holes in which you place your arms. Elastic makes sure the bag fits tightly against your arms so no light leaks through.

Burke & James

Burke & James. Classic 4x5/5x7 cameras indicates Burke & James was a large Chicago camera store that sold good value products under its house brand. The company was in business from 1897 until the early 1970s. (Burke & James History, photo.net. See also Burke and James Press Camera Manual and Burke & James Press Camera.)

Refinishing to Reveal Maple. Burke & James view cameras were usually painted grey with red bellows. Underneath the grey paint is maple wood. "Some notes on restoring an 8x10 Burke and James View Camera," Large Format Photography discusses stripping the paint from a camera like mine and staining the underlying maple wood darker. The finished product shown in that article is beautiful. Flicker also has photos of beautifully restored Burke & James view cameras with the paint removed. Camera 1, Camera 2. Christopher - Motorcycles has some nice images from a Burke and James 8 x 10 view camera.

300mm f5.6 Schneider Kreuznach Symmar-S lens. The 300mm lens is considered a normal lens for 8 x 10 cameras. Technical data for the 300mm f5.6 Schneider Kreuznach Symmar-S lens is at the Schneider Optics site. The lens is made in Germany. It is about 10cm long with a mass of 1.215 Kg with its Compur 3 shutter. Shutter speeds are from 1 to 1/200 and Time. Apertures range from f5.6 to f64. A comment by a professional photographer at a Flicker Large Format Discussion states: "A 300mm like a Symmar-S or a Sironar N in a Copal #3 shutter should be fairly inexpensive (~$300) if you hunt a bit. There's not a huge demand for these bulky studio lenses, but they're fast and sharp (if not light)." A discussion entitled 300mm f/5.6 Symmar-S [circa 1980] vs Current 300mm f/5.6 Apo-Symmar indicates that person's 300mm f5.6 Symmar-S is from about 1980. Someone replying indicated they had a newer 300mm f/5.6 Symmar-S. My lens therefore probably dates around 1980 give or take. Schneider Kreuznach - Wikipedia has a list of dozens of Schneider Kreuznach lenses produced since the company was founded in 1913.

Gitzo Tripod. The tripod is a very robust Gitzo tripod with a pan tilt head. I can't find any model number on the tripod itself. The head is marked R.No.2. The tripod is similar to one that was on eBay, "GITZO 500 Tele Studex Giant Heavy Duty R No.3 tripod head." That one was taller, however. I think the Giant may be the extra tall ones. Mine is also similar to the new Gitzo G-1506 Tele Studex Compact Tripod legs at B & H Photo that sells for $525 without center column or head! My tripod is very sturdy and works well. It is clearly intended for heavy cameras. It is compact when closed measuring only 21 inches long without the head. It is a four segment tripod with each segment being only about 1 foot long. The maximum height to the base where the head sits is about 48.5 inches. The center column increases it about another 7.5 inches. The head is 6 inches high. The maximum height with the center column extended and the head attached is about 62 inches. The legs also extend out in at least two different angles allowing you to have a very wide base and a low height of 21.25 inches even with the center column and head. Gitzo tripods are made in France and are generally very well respected and expensive. I also have a much lighter Gitzo Gilux Reporter tripod which I use for my digital SLR. It is a wonderful tripod that I purchased for only $5 or $10 a couple of years ago at a local garage sale. A nice thing about tripods is that they really don't change that quickly over time. An old tripod is still very useable. While a graphite tripod might be nice, these aluminum tripods perform very well.

Condition. Everything seems to be in good condition. The bellows appears to be in great shape. The lens looks very clear. It has perhaps a very minor scuff. It does not come with lens caps. The tripod works very well although it may be missing a knob on the end of the lever which raises the center post. This does not affect the operation at all.

Purchase. I purchased it at a 11-14-09 garage sale in the Ocean Beach - Point Loma area of San Diego. The garage sale was advertised on Craiglist and mentioned an 8x10 camera and heavy duty Gitzo tripod. The seller was a professional photographer. Originally he offered the camera and lens for $300 and another $100 for the tripod. I negotiated $300 for everything. He used the camera for fine arts work. For example, he showed me a photo of high surf and surfing by Boomer's Beach and La Jolla Cove. He took it with this camera. He sent it to a facility in Los Angeles for processing. They also scanned it for him. It was eventually digitally printed also.

My Plans. This camera will probably be only for my collection. I would like to experiment with large format photography someday. Available on Google Books is Steve Simon's Using the View Camera with general information on operation of a view camera. I also have a 4x5 camera, however. 4x5 appears to be much more practical to use. Film is much more readily available and less expensive. Further, it might be possible to process black and white negatives myself. Also, I would probably be able to scan it myself. While an 8x10 image has 4 times the area and hence resolution of a 4x5 image, a 4x5 image is still very large. The tripod here would be great to use with the 4x5 camera. I am intrigued by the possibility of stripping the old grey paint from my 8x10 James and Burke camera and then probably coating the wood with polyurethane. The natural wood should be very beautiful. I personally like maple. It seems to be a do-able project.

Calumet

Conley

Graflex

The Pacemaker Speed Graphic 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 sold for $338.20 in the 1955 Sears Camera Catalog. That's equal to $2,680 in 2008 dollars. This was therefore clearly a professional level camera. The 4 x 5 Speed Graphic sold for only slightly more at $356.75. The Crown Graphic models without the focal plane shutter of the Speed Graphic models sold for $315.85 for the 4 x 5 model and $318.90 for the 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 model. The only cameras in the 1955 Sears Camera Catalog selling for more than the Speed Graphic cameras was the Hasselblad with the 80mm f2.8 Kodak Ektar lens selling for $476 and some of the Zeiss Contax 35mm rangefinder cameras which ranged from $336 to $412 depending on the lens they came with. The Nikon 35mm rangefinder with Nikkor f2 lens and Leica mount was a bargin at $269.

Manufactured by Graflex, Inc., Rochester 8, New York, U.S.A. The shutter and lens were also made in the U.S.A. by Eastman Kodak, also located in Rochester. I believe the camera will take either sheet film or roll film. These were also made in 4" x 5" and 3.25" x 4.25" models. Cosmetically, it is in excellent condition. There is some paint loss near the name "Speed Graphic." The rangefinder works. The lens looks clear and free of scratches. The leather is good. It opens by pressing a button under the leather just in front of the top of the handle. This took me quite a while to find out and apparently is one of the most frequently asked questions about the Speed Graphic. I have not fired the shutter yet since I need to figure out how to cock it. I haven't spent much time with the camera yet, and it is indeed a pretty complicated looking piece of equipment which, of course, just adds to its extreme coolness! I'm going to study up on how to operate it so as to not break anything. I purchased it with a bunch of other camera equipment for a total of $75 on 2-1-09 in Chula Vista, CA from an ad on Craigslist. This was by far the most valuable item and we allocated $50 to it. The seller had acquired the items as part of a large collection of things in an apartment contents auction. The original owner was an elderly gentleman in his 90s who had to leave the apartment for medical reasons. A super cool camera which I will be exploring more in the future!

Kodak

Pony Premo No. 3, Camerapedia indicates the Victor shutter may have been an advanced version of Bausch & Lomb's famous Unicum shutter. The apertures are f128 (astonishing small), f64, f32, f16, f8. Shutter speeds are 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/25, 1/100, B (bulb) and T (Time). The focusing scale goes down to 6 feet. The lens is marked "4 x 5 Rapid Rectilinear Lens." The focal length is not marked but looks to be about 6.5 inches or 165mm. The camera uses 4" x 5" sheet film which is still available today. With some minor modification, these cameras can therefore still be used today as explained at Paul Lewis, Bare Bones Vintage Cameras, Photovision Arts and Techniques Magazine, vol. 1, no. 2. The manual is available at www.cameramanuals.org. These types of cameras are sometimes called cycle cameras because they collapsed to a small size allowing you to take them on a bicycle ride. The 1890s and the early 1900s were a golden age for both the bicycle and American field view cameras. Cameras like this were finely crafted although directed to amateur photographers. My Seroco camera below is a similar example.

My Pony Premo No.3 comes with a case snugly fitting the closed camera and three film holders. The camera is in exceptionally good condition. The bellows look excellent. The outer pebbled leather is in good condition with some wear especially on the bottom. The shutter and aperture work well. The lens is scratch free and clear. The bulb trigger on the shutter does not appear to work or I may not be using it correctly. The wood on the drop plate is very good with a few minor nicks. It looks like the viewer might have been moved because there are two nail or screw holes behind it. The lens appears to be rotated slightly. There are a few nicks in the wood above the "Pony Premo No.3" tag. The brass and chrome are in excellent condition. The case is intact but has significant wear. The film holders are in good condition but only one is complete. I bought the Pony Premo No. 3 and several other cameras in La Mesa, CA from a ad on Craigslist on 10-6-09. The ad listed it for $85. Another ad for a Eastman Kodak No. 2A Folding Hawk-Eye Model B folding camera from the same seller was listed for $75. I purchased these two cameras and five others for a total of $120. The other cameras were an 8mm Bell & Howell Model 172 movie camera, an 16mm Revere Model 16 movie camera, an Agfa Ansco No. 1A Readset Royal folding camera, a Rekkord folding camera, and a Polaroid SX-70 (no view through viewfinder).

Kodak was formed in Rochester in the 1800s by George Eastman. It became the dominant photographic film and chemical company in the world. It also brought consumer cameras to the masses. In 1975 it even developed the first digital camera prototype. While Kodak is still an important imaging company, the advent of digital photography has greatly reduced its size. Eastman Kodak was added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index in 1930 and remained on the index until 2004. In December 2010, Standard and Poor's removed Eastman Kodak from the S&P 500 index, although Eastman Chemical, a former Eastman Kodak subsidiary, is still on the list. (Eastman Kodak - Wikipedia.) The S&P "index includes 500 leading companies in leading industries of the U.S. economy." (Standard & Poor's.

As indicated in The Rochester Camera and Lens Companies article by R. Kinglake, March 1974, Folmer originally started in 1887 as a bicycle company in New York City, but by the 1890s had added cameras to the products it sold. Both cameras and bicycles were hot items in the 1890s. Foldable 4x5" cameras were even known as cycle cameras since you could take them on a cycling trip. In April 1905 the Folmer and Schwing Manufacturing Company was bought by Eastman Kodak and moved to Rochester becoming a division of Eastman Kodak. In 1927 Kodak divested itself of the Folmer division and the Folmer Graflex Corporation was formed. (Camerapedia Graflex Reflex Models.) Folmer Graflex Corporation was dissolved in 1973. It was an important camera manufacturer thoughout the first half of the 20th century making medium and large format single lens reflex cameras (although looking much different than the SLRs of the 1960s and 1970s) and press cameras.

Wollensak was formed in 1899 by Andrew Wollensak who had worked for the Rochester lens maker, Bausch & Lomb. Wollensak made shutters and lenses. It ceased doing business in 1972.

My camera must have been made after 1927 when the Folmer Graflex Corporation was formed. Folmer Graflex and Eastman Kodak retained a working relationship, however, since Folmer Graflex made the camera for Eastman Kodak. Dating my Kodak 2D 8x10, page 3, www.apug.org, lists a camera with a serial no. of 189999 having a date of 1932 to 1937. (See also Serial number on Eastman View Camera 2-D?, APUG - Dating my Kodak 2D 8x10.) Mine is only about 1,500 past that number. I therefore guess that my camera was made in the mid to late 1930s.

I purchased my camera on February 12, 2011 in Poway, California from an ad on Craigslist for $100. It appears to be in good cosmetic and operating condition. The wood is apparently mahogany with the bed cherry. (www.betterphoto.com, Antique Eastman Kodak 2D 8 X 10 View Camera.) It was dusty. I cleaned the wood with Murphy Oil Soap. This sort of dulled things. I therefore wiped the wood down with teak oil. It looks very nice now. I don't necessarily recommend doing either of these things, however. The typical Antique Road Show advice is to just leave things alone. It does look quite nice after the teak oil, however. The photos were taken before the teak oil. The bellows are in very good shape and I assume are a replacement. The shutter seems to work fine. The lens is clear and scratch free. It does have a small dent on the inside ring, however. The lens appears to be uncoated. The shutter was modified to allow it to be synchronized with a flash. The metal parts are in good shape, although not polished. The back is missing the 8x10 ground glass. Instead the prior owner modified it to put in a 4x5" ground glass. It looks like it could be converted back to 8x10", however, with a new 8x10" piece of ground glass. It did not come with any film plates. The seller thought he may have the ground glass and some film plates, however, and agreed to look for them and give me a call if he finds them. Seller's father bought the camera used perhaps twenty years ago. The father used the camera in his photography studio. The family lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In this tourist town, the camera was used to take sepia tone photos of people dressed up in old fashioned outfits. The seller's father added the flash synchronization. The camera's history in the previous 50 years or so is unknown. The camera has survived its 70+ year history with grace, however, and is a beautiful combination of wood, metal and glass all assembled in Rochester, N.Y.

Several sites discuss the Eastman (Kodak) View Camera No. 2-D including: Large Format Photography, Eastman View Camera No. 2-D - Camerapedia, Ebay Review Eastman 2D 8x10 View Camera, PhotoKB - Eastman Kodak 2D, Flickr - Eastman View Camera No. 2-D, Large Format Photography - Eastman View No. 2.

Seroco