Show Us Your Camera

This is high on my restoration list a Half plate Gandolfi, I have a more modern half-plate/7x5 back that should fit.

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Not bad for £30 including a lens and tripod. The lens was useless someone had removed the shutter blades, just needs a replacement brass piece, I have some strips of the right alloy, and then new bellows.

Ian
 
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Ian, underneath the battered exterior that Gandolfi looks like a very nicely designed camera. And very nicely made too -look how the screw slots line up along the front. Beautiful figured Mahogany too. You can't get that anymore, unless you cut your great-grandmother's sideboard up.
Will you make your own replacement bellows?

Alan
 
Alan Clark said:
Ian, underneath the battered exterior that Gandolfi looks like a very nicely designed camera. And very nicely made too -look how the screw slots line up along the front. Beautiful figured Mahogany too. You can't get that anymore, unless you cut your great-grandmother's sideboard up.
Will you make your own replacement bellows?

Alan
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Yes, I've about a dozen sets of bellows to make, I keep putting it off. I've a few cameras sat restored just needing bellows and a quarter plate enlarger (5x4 as well if I had a second larger set of condensers).

I've made bellows before, when you need a few sets it becomes too expensive to get them from Custom Bellows. It was the same with Ground Glass screens, I needed ten so began making my own.

This was my very first restoration about 10 years ago:

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That's the state I was given it in back around 1993 by an ex-girlfriend.

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I had to get a new front standard made, these days I'd make it myself.

Ian
 
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The Houghton Duchess, my first Half plate camera with a Dallmeyer RR lens,

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and with a more modern 165mm f6.3 Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens, I have an adapter plate to use modern 5x4 DDS, also original tripod legs.

My smallest LF camera

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a 9x12cm Patent Etui, compare this to my Graflex Pacemaker Crown Graphic (and a 6x4.5 Ikonta)

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The 9x12 format is close to 5" x 3¾" and was the Continental European equivalent, this is the smallest LF camera ever made, much smaller than other German 9x12 cameras.

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Next to a 9x12 Rodenstock and it fits in a pocket :D

Ian
 
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This one isn't mine, it was a bit of a basket case belonging to another member here, he's not seen it restored yet :D

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Ian
 
Mathieu Bauwens said:
very nice camera, Ken
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Found my unopened box of 5x7 GGs the other day took one piece downtown to a 'gallery' and 'politely' asked if he would cut a 5x7 down to 4x5 for my OLD Century (4x5) for me on his 'machine' (that will cut up to about 60 inches) He had never cut a GG before but managed to 'satisfy my needs'..and at 'NO cost' I walked out 'smiling'

Ken
 
Picked up my Kodak Specialist II on Sunday evening.

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The camera came with the optional sliding tripod block. this helps with stability.

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The lens is a 203mm f7.7 Ektar in an Epsilon shutter

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The camera came with a Dallmeyer 4¼" f6.5-11 wide angle lens which Kodak sold as an accessory.

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There's an original flight case and 6 half plate DDS film holders, however I have plenty of 7x5 DDS which are the same fit as well as film. I'm looking forward to using the camera.

I have two 120mm lenses in shutters, a 120mm f6.8 Goerz Berlin Dagor and a 120mm f6.8 Angulon. The Angulon covers 7x5 at all apertures, the Dagor when stopped down to f22.

Ian
 
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Mathieu Bauwens said:
very nice camera, Ken
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I Went downtown to find a 'someone to 'downsize' a new 5x7 GG to 4x5 and 'I'll put it in it's proper place... now all I have to do is check out how best to gently 'clean' the old lens... but I 'm not sure that the shutter is till in 'working condition'... but I'll try it.... and see if it needs a 'servicing'
I might end up being used as 'decoration' or... as an 'archaic' paper weight... 8-(
Ken
 
Not as lovely as some of the kit shown here, but this is my Intrepid 5x4.
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And this is my grandmothers Ansco No.3, which takes either 118 film (I've got 118/120 adaptors on their way) or 1/4 plate sheets. If the 120 film comes out OK I'll order some 1/4 plate film and see how that goes. I don't think it's been used since about the 1950s but the shutter sounds OK. No idea about the bellows, nor how to source a replacement if they are shot.
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I had thought about cannibalising the lens and trying that on my Intrepid (accepting the vignetting), but then I stumbled across someone in Italy who makes adaptors to make 120 film fit into a 118 space (https://www.camerhack.it/shop/) so I thought I'd give it a go and see if it's still usable.
 
The lens of the Ansco would probably cover 5x4 but with no room for movements, after all it's designed for Quarter plate and some rise and fall. I assume it's around 135mm.

I have some Kodak lenses off similar sized cameras and they'd all been tried by the friend I ahd them off, and they covered. I lent one a Voigtlander 135mm Avus to Ian Barber last year and he had some excellent images from it, here's an example. It may be a slightly more upmarket lens than the Ansco's :D

Ian
 
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My 10x8 Agfa Ansco Commercial View camera, I bought this around 15 years ago from a Photography Professor in Portland, Maine, the original owner had been a student then lecturer at the Clarence White School of Photography. He'd bought what was in 1939/40considered the best US 10x8 cameras and lens - a 12" f6.8 CP Goerz AM Opt Daror.

The camera came with 3 spare new undrilled lens boards, the board with the Dagor and another that had been used with a 300mm f9 Nikkor M, plus a Compendium lens hood, 3 DDS, a new in its box Beattie Intenscreen, and a large dark-cloth. A complete outfit, the Compendium lens hood attaches to the aluminium block to the left of the lens.

The 12" Dagor had been coated after WWII. The camera has an extension rail, sliding tripod block and there's also built in rear extension as can be seen in the last photo, unusually the camera has front swing. Overall there's 36½ inches 993cm) of extension.

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The first image I made with the camera in January 2005, and one made 2 months later.

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I do need to use this camera more, It's great to use and the Dagor is an excellent lens focussing really easy, with larger formats it's snappy :D

Ian
 
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Ian,
Could you tell us a little more about the table on the rear standard of the Kodak Specialist?
 
David M said:
Ian,
Could you tell us a little more about the table on the rear standard of the Kodak Specialist?
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It's the positions of the front and rear standards and the lens extension factors from 1::27 to 1:1. Both sets of rails have accurate metric scales. Actually the tables a bit worn on my camera so difficult to read. I could replace it a friend had made parts like this with a laser etcher in the past if I supply an image file. I think the table is also in the manual so I could just make a card copy.

There was a clinical version of the camera and that included items to help quickly and accurately position the camera.

Ian
 
Thank you. It looked to me as though you were supposed to fill in your own values for any three lenses you owned. I had guessed that pencilled (?) numbers had rubbed off. Presumably after setting the standards, you'd use the sliding tripod block to bring the image into focus at the desired magnification.

1:27 seems an odd magnification, as does 1:7.
1:2, 1:4 and 1:8 seem what you'd expect. Was there some special purpose for the others? I'm thinking of something like photographing a standard object such as (eg) a microscope slide to yield a convenient printed size for distribution or filing. Something half an inch long would just about fit a foolscap sheet.
I realise that it's not foolscap film. This is just thinking out loud.
 
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Yes the markings for the 203mm Ektar are in pencil. In practice Kodak only sold the Specialist 2 camera with the Ektar which is excellent from Infinity to 1:1 due to its Dialyte design, and also the optional Dallmeyer Wide angle. The previous pre-WWII versions were sold with a choice of Ross, Cooke, and Dallmeyer lenses, Kodak were the distributors for Ross and Cooke lenses in some countries fir a while.

A measure was used to initially position the camera and no doubt the sliding block used for accurate focus which is why unlike any other field cameras it's got geared tracking for precision. I've definitely got articles somewhere on medical/clinical photography from the 1940's or 50's, probably earlier as well, next time I come across them I'll see what they say about magnifications.

I'd not thought of looking but I should also have the Press Release in the relevant BJP Almanac when the camera was released. Essentially there were three assembled kit versions, Laboratory, Clinical, and View.

Ian
 
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