jorn ake

You might try Christopher James' book, The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. I seem to remember that he covers tintypes, but I am not sure if I remember that he does glass plates. My books are in a room full of sleeping (oh thank god) nieces who are visiting right now. He does have a pretty good list of sources in the back. One of them is Photographer's Formulary who carry quite a range of chemistry. The other is Chicago Albumen Works, makers of POP or printing out paper for those glass plate negatives after you are done.

Your rewind release lever is showing.

How about some classic cat photos?

Ron, consider yourself joined. There isn't really a test or anything. A Contax gets you more than enough points.

Thanks all. It's decided. Fix it is. I'll post photos when it is done, and I will dig through the photos I have from my grandfather and see if I can find some he probably shot with this camera.

 

Rick, you are a gentleman for sure. Thank you very much. I will contact you off list if local sources come to naught.

My grandfather would take it and have it fixed. Or he would give it to my dad. This grandfather gave me a Kodak Ektra (what was he thinking?) early in my life that I accidently dropped out a window. He tended to enjoy gadgets. But he would take this down to the local camera jockey, have him fix it, probably on some sort of barter. My grandfather was a surgeon in a small town in Indiana and walking down main street was like walking through his medical files - "Worked on his heart, delivered her baby, delivered him, took out his appendix too..." So he could work the barter pretty well. Even in his retirement, people would stop by the house and drop off eggs, chickens, fruit, vegetables, half a cow...

You can get Mamiya M645 cameras with lens, insert and prism for just outside your price range - in the neighborhood of $350-390. I guess that is a bit outside. Getting it with just a waistlevel will bring the price down, but it also makes shooting 645 more difficult.

 

The Fuji rangefinders, the GA645, GS645 (and their wide-angle counterparts) can dip down to $350. They do maintain their resale value pretty well though. A friend bought a GS two years ago and sold it just recently for exactly what he bought it for. Might be worth saving your pennies for and buying a cleaner example.

 

6x7 is tough, but you can sometimes find user quality (KEH bargain quality) Pentax 6x7s for $400 and Mamiya RB67's for $350 complete.

 

I don't know any rangefinders that sell for $200, other than folding bellows-based models and you want to avoid bellows.

This Argus C44 (early one) was just given to me by my sister who is up

visiting from North Carolina. It was given to her by my grandfather, a

man I spent a lot of time with while I was growing but who

unfortunately lost his ability to function mentally far before his

body let him go. As a result, these sorts of gifts are few and far

between. So sentiment and nostalgia are to be assumed here. The camera

has similarly lost its ability to function - shutter, wind, and

shutter release are frozen but the body is hale and hearty. Lens

focuses (rangefinder out of alignment) lens removes, film sprockets

disengage and move when wind lever is set to rewind, but no forward

winding motion is possible, no shutter operation nor return spring to

the shutter release. My sister wants me to get it fixed and take some

photographs with it. I have been quoted a repair figure of about $85,

but I am going to bet that is low. I know I can get a working one for

less than that as well. You can see my dilemma unfolding. Should I get

a similar vintage, equivalent condition replacement and shoot some

photographs, thereby deceiving my sister and trodding upon the grave

of my grandfather or should I fix it?

 

I think I should fix it.

 

Any good repair shops who do Argii to recommend?

Light leaks that show up intermittantly can be the result of a tiny light leak in the body of the camera and not necessarily in the way the film is rolled. Specifically, if you shoot three frames quickly, none of those frames are exposed to the light leak long enough for any of the leak's effects to register on the film. However, say you take a break for lunch and leave the camera with the film advanced to the fourth frame sitting out on the table for several minutes, hours, etc. This frame will show light leaks because the time the film was exposed to the leak was long enough for leak to register on the film.

 

You can shoot a test roll emulating this situation. With the lens cap on, shoot three frames quickly, then allow the camera to sit for an hour on the fourth frame. After an hour is up, fire the camera with the lens cap on and advance. Next, remove the lens cap and repeat the three quick frames, leave the fourth frame sitting for an hour, fire off that frame, and then develop. The fourth and eighth shots should be light leak free. If not, then the leak should only appear on the fourth and eighth and definitely not on the second and sixth, which means you have a camera problem. If leaks appear on random frames throughout the roll, then you may have a film rolling problem problem.

They look a bit like the size of the image that comes out of the Kodak 1A Autographic (or similar) - the one that took 116 film. The image size was 2 1/2 x 4 1/4. Usually, as Alan says, these were contact printed and attached board when they were processed. Both of your prints are pretty nice. Keep them out of direct sunlight though, and if you frame them, put them behind a nice piece of glass for archival protection. After years in a shoebox, a little UV exposure and they can fade quickly.

Kim:

 

I saw a retrospective show of her work at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, and that show contained a number of photographs that captured her in the act of shooting. What I was struck by at the time (and have since noticed in photos of several famous "Leica" photographers at work) is that she used quite a few different cameras. The previously linked photographs are pretty famous, but there was also a shot of her using a Rolleiflex and another of her using a large format SLR - like a Graflex Super D or similar. I think as a professional photographer, Inge Morath used the tool she calculated would fit the task at a particular moment just as any professional would. But I think that it might not be a far stretch to guess that in the making of her last book, given her physical condition, she would perhaps be using the camera with which she was most comfortable.

 

That's a nice book, eh? I can recommend another photographer's work - Sylvia Plachy's Self Portrait with Cows Going Home. Really quite nice. Different from Morath but really good.

Here is a link to a long list of people working in homemade cameras. There are some really amazing contraptions on this list. Some very elegant, some not so. Quite a number use a camera in order to make a camera - i.e. a pre-existing setup that is modified to fit the task. Panoramics, shifts, tilts, large format lenses on medium format bodies, etc. Anyway, here is the link: http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/homebrew.html

 

Two of the more frequently modified are the Graflex XL and the Mamiya Press series of medium format bodies. Modifiers seem to like these cameras because of the focusing helical and the relatively simple body - no internal shutter, mirror, or film advance to get in the way. Big Camera includes instructions and will sell you a kit for modifying a Mamiya into a right nice looking 4x5 - http://bigcamera.com/index.htm

Aye Bruno.

I think too that people have to remember that there are several pseudonyms out there just looking to sucker people into fisticuffs with inflammatory remarks.

 

Related to these postings, while I was living in Europe, I was always amazed (amazement being different than disapproval mind you) by what Europeans (men and women) on vacation would wear (or not wear as the case may be) vis a vis the conservatism of what they wore at home or the conservatism of the country in which they were vacationing. There is a sign in Dubrovnik pleading with people to please keep their clothes on so the monks in the monastery perched above the bathing area would not confronted by nudity during their daily work.

 

I will also note that the whole body thing in Europe seemed a lot healthier. Naked people everywhere and no one panicking. Very refreshing.

I think Sedgeway is more accurate, given that sedges are near relatives to grasses and these things look like old lawn mowers in the first place.

Your Industar - that's not oil. That's vodka.

I understand the restriction re: posting For Sale items in the

individual forums, but I am getting scams in response to my postings

in the classifieds now. People from Benin want to send me a gadzillion

dollars for my cameras and then pass the difference in cash off to

some uncle brother cousin. I told them to ask the FBI for permission

first. Photo.net needs to put a 20 second delay on the seller's email

in those postings or only make the email available to members or keep

all questions and contacts on the site. Something. I know others have

gotten this scam too. Sure I know this sort of thing happens. I am not

totally clueless. But why help them out?

Yeah sure, but it's fun! Woohoo!<p>

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And for as bad a company and as expensive a product and so forth and so on, last time I looked, B&H was stocked with plenty of varieties of nice fresh Polaroid film so shoot away!<p>

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<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/3608322-md.jpg">

You can use any of their 3x4 pack film, including the nifty 665 P/N film. 10 exposures for about $15, so that is $1.50 a shot, a little clearing in sodium sulfite, some Fotoflo, then dry and scan or print. Robert Frank does it (he uses a Konica Instant Press) and you can too.

I have bought quite a few cameras from them, ranging from absolute beater to brand new, and their service has always been great. Frequently their cameras are CLA'd beforehand and will be marked as such on their website. They are all photographers there, and technical questions are answered well and honestly. The shop is great for drooling, so if you get a chance, stop by.

Let me adjust that a bit: just an RB, too much money; RB-S, about right, maybe a bit high; RB-SD, a good deal.

If KEH prices are any measure, they seem to say that is somewhere between about right and a bit of a deal - depending on which vintage RB67 model we are talking about. Obviously the RB is a nice camera with a proven track record. But given past experience with that shop, you ought to low-ball your offer. The shopkeep already knows you are willing to spend too much money on a worthless Nikon F2AS though, so your cover may be totally blown. ;-)

Thanks!

 

Pat is the sort of woman I imagined Europe was full of as I was growing up in Virginia. And when I finally got to Europe, I found out that it was true. Slender and stylish.

...or worse.<div></div>

...older...<div></div>