"Holly Cow, Superman! ...
... it's a Graflex Crown Graphic ... the old 4x5 press camera. I'm using it to take architectural subjects around here and will take it into the Adirondacks later this summer.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
Back in May, Cole Bellamy was across the counter at E.P. Levine's regaling me with stories of the good ol' days (when real men smelled like Dektol) and I told him about my unexpected acquisition of a 4x5 enlarger -- the amazing Beseler CB-7.
Without missing a beat Cole said, "Don't move!"
I thought he was running urgently to the bathroom, but then out he comes with a wide grin -- you have to see Cole's mischievous grin, the one peeking through his handsome Civil War-era goatee (just above his bow tie) -- carrying a grey Vulcanoid Handicase which looked like the personal effects of a deceased Boston Fireman.
Said Cole, now deadly serious, "This will go with your enlarger."
Inside was the object itself, but also two vintage Schneider lenses, a manual, flash apparatus (this is the selfsame apparatus that George Lucas used for the original Light Saber in the first Star Wars picture) and pristine flash bulbs waiting to be fired. The kit, and its smell, will take you back to Dallas, 1963.
It's clean, but you have to be there to hear the sprung track supports click into place when the openned front drops down. An Aston Martin's clove box being opened ... the way it moves the air: more of a 'SchUNK' than a 'SchPROING.'
Mike at Levine's said it came from Rochester, NY, home of Big Yellow, the RIT photography department, George Eastman House & the old Graflex Co. itself. This one may have been Mr Graflex's personal unit. (Graflex was Kodak's old Folmer & Schwing Division that was spun off in the 1940s; Singer "wound" the company down in 1973 and Toyo acquired the tooling).
David Burnett (of The New York Times) still shoots with the bigger Speed Graphic and even a Holga from time to time.
Good article on Photo.net by Tim Takahashi on the Speed Graphic.
"Holly Cow, Superman! ...
... it's a Graflex Crown Graphic ... the old 4x5 press camera. I'm using it to take architectural subjects around here and will take it into the Adirondacks later this summer.
I should have kept my mouth shut.
Back in May, Cole Bellamy was across the counter at E.P. Levine's regaling me with stories of the good ol' days (when real men smelled like Dektol) and I told him about my unexpected acquisition of a 4x5 enlarger -- the amazing Beseler CB-7.
Without missing a beat Cole said, "Don't move!"
I thought he was running urgently to the bathroom, but then out he comes with a wide grin -- you have to see Cole's mischievous grin, the one peeking through his handsome Civil War-era goatee (just above his bow tie) -- carrying a grey Vulcanoid Handicase which looked like the personal effects of a deceased Boston Fireman.
Said Cole, now deadly serious, "This will go with your enlarger."
Inside was the object itself, but also two vintage Schneider lenses, a manual, flash apparatus (this is the selfsame apparatus that George Lucas used for the original Light Saber in the first Star Wars picture) and pristine flash bulbs waiting to be fired. The kit, and its smell, will take you back to Dallas, 1963.
It's clean, but you have to be there to hear the sprung track supports click into place when the openned front drops down. An Aston Martin's clove box being opened ... the way it moves the air: more of a 'SchUNK' than a 'SchPROING.'
Mike at Levine's said it came from Rochester, NY, home of Big Yellow, the RIT photography department, George Eastman House & the old Graflex Co. itself. This one may have been Mr Graflex's personal unit. (Graflex was Kodak's old Folmer & Schwing Division that was spun off in the 1940s; Singer "wound" the company down in 1973 and Toyo acquired the tooling).
David Burnett (of The New York Times) still shoots with the bigger Speed Graphic and even a Holga from time to time.
Good article on Photo.net by Tim Takahashi on the Speed Graphic.