Marty Forscher, Inventor and Camera Repair Guru, Dies at 87

Once upon a time, there was a camera repair shop in Rockefeller Center in New York City. It was called called Professional Camera

Repair Service, but everyone knew it as, "Marty Forscher's". Well, <A HREF="http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/photo-

news/obituaries/e3i505f5fdeedc76b425fee7e8424140471"> Marty passed away this week at the age of 87</A>. There will never be anyone

like him again.

<p>Thanks for the post Noah. Gosh, I remember his ads for camera repair since I was in high school in the 70s. What an interesting life. He was sort of the technician to the stars of photography. I wonder what he invented though.</p>

<p>He invented the Polaroid back for other film cameras (other than Polaroid). I bought one from him in 1981. No discount and nobody else had them. He told me I was the first guy to get one for b&w. I sold it years ago and forget the serial number, but it was something like #3. Nice guy and very competent. Was wondering the other day if he was still alive.</p>

<A HREF="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder.tcl?folder_id=935497"> I made a new folder to showcase the Books of

Professional Camera Repair</A>, I will update this folder as quickly as I can.

<p>While at SVA during the 70's Marty was very good to us (photography students) making camera repair affordable. He was a good man. I used his service until the late 80's. I'm saddened by his death.<br>

<img src="http://photoflashbulb.com/rff/pcrs.jpg" alt="" width="401" height="222" /></p>

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<p>From Bill Pierce on RFF: "Marty, what an incredibly decent man. When I was in school in the mid 50's the center of the photographic universe was 480 Lexington Ave., the Grand Central Palace. Marty took care of your cameras. Axel Grosser souped your film in a one man (plus a receptionist) branch of Modernage. Katherine Ujeley Bertrand retouched the portraits of girls you wanted to impress (She had learned to retouch small film during WWII when there was no sheet film in Europe.). Actually, they were your family. And Sam Locker at Royaltone, the Fotocare of the Fifties, was the grouchy neighbor. And punk kids from New Jersey were treated as well as their heroes, many of whom they were introduced to at Marty's. <br />People forget, cameras were forever. Every year your cameras would get rotated through Marty's and get a CLA, clean, lubricate and adjust. I remember when one photographer had a camera smashed at a civil rights demonstration, Marty epoxied the main body casting and kept the camera going. Marty was repairing the cameras of the kids covering the movement for free. <br />If you were on the road and needed something repaired or customized, he moved on it, shipped it and trusted you would pay him when you got back. <br />Marty made the first thumb wind; actually it was an index finger wind, an arm that attached to the circular wind knobs of 35mm cameras with a hole that accepted your index finger and allowed you to spin the wind knob. By the time he moved up to 37 W. 47th in the diamond district, all 35 cameras had wind levers, but he started it. The 180 and 300mm Olympic Sonnars, movie camera lenses, were the long lenses of choice and Marty adapted them to everything from Visoflexes to Nikons. If you wanted that extra smooth focusing movement, he showed you how to temporarily replace the lubricant in the lens with valve grinding compound. When the Leicaflex first came out, there were no zoom lenses for it; so, he adapted Nikon lenses for it. When he first made Polaroid backs for Nikons, he made me a Canon "prototype" so I wouldn't feel left out. <br />I don't know how he did it, but Marty knew the name of every photographer that came into that shop. And it wasn't that he checked the name on the repair slip. If he saw you on the street, he called out your name. He didn't pretend to be your friend; he was your friend. What a kind, decent man. There are little pools of goodness in our tiny photo world and Marty's was one of them, thanks to Marty." </p>

 

 

 

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