Sorry It's been so long in comming. Here's my latest random musings.
Today’s post is about two major events in my life since last you heard from me. The first is the purchase of a camera older than I am- a Graphic View 2 large format view camera. My friend purchased this a few months ago, but just hasn’t used it a lot. I was in the market, and he offered to sell it to me. This camera was built-- I say built, not made, because this is a precision-engineered piece of photographic equipment with no plastic and lots of metal-- this camera was built sometime in the ‘50s or ‘60s by the Graflex company in Rochester, New York.
The Graphic View 2 is a ‘limited’ view camera- it uses a monorail and has more movements than a folding or field camera, but doesn’t have all the movements of a full-fledged view camera. It allows you to make the following movements: Front rise, tilt, and swing; Rear swing and tilt. It is missing any sort of horizontal shift. The back is not the celebrated Graflok back, but is rather innovative regardless. One tab on the back inserts into the bottom of the rear standard, and the top locks with two metal tabs. This allows you to very easily switch from horizontal to vertical orientations.
The ground glass has a fresnel-type screen to assist in focusing, and has a 1 cm grid on the back to help you with keeping your horizons and buildings straight. It uses a spring-pressure system to hold the film holders in place. It also includes a very useful clip-on hood that springs out, shading the ground glass. It is too deep to allow use of a loupe, but it gives you a great way to get an initial setup. With the hood attached, you frame your photo, make any rises you need to make, and make a rough focus. Then, take the hood off, pull out your loupe, and make fine focus adjustments.
The monorail is what sets this view camera apart from others. It uses a triangular rail and a special stand that clamps on to the rail and provides a standard 3/8” socket to attach to a tripod head. The stand gives you up-and-down movement and side-to-side movement. It isn’t the greatest stand, however. It could just be it’s age, but it moves slowly and is not smooth at all. Fortunately, there’s a different way to attach this camera to a tripod. The base of the triangular rail just happens to fit perfectly in the quick-release socket of the Manfrotto 486RC2 head. This allows you to directly attach the rail to your tripod head, using your tripod head for movement instead of the custom head provided by Graflex.
The lens that came with the camera is a Schneider Xenar 150 f/4.5. This is a fast lens, which gives you a whole lot of light for focusing. It doesn’t give you much room for movements, but it’s enough for most situations. It seems to be pretty sharp- I’ve not been able to do enough shots to give you a exhaustive review, but I’ve not seen any shots that were blurry due to the lens not being sharp. The lens board is a less-common size, but adapters do exist for Pacemaker-style lens boards.
The bellows on the Graphic View 2 is a red synthetic leather-like material that has held up remarkably well. Even though this camera shows little sign of use, it is 40+ years old. There were no light leaks or holes in the bellows. It is a tapered bellows- it decreases in size as you get closer to the front standard. This cuts down on the possibility of bellows sag, another area where this particular camera has not had a problem. The bad thing about this bellows, however, is that it is non-replaceable. This means you can’t use a bag bellows for extremely short lenses. Some extreme movements on the 150mm lens are hampered by the current bellows (it’s worst when you use a front swing and tilt); I’ve not tried it on wider lenses.
Wow, that was a lot of talk about cameras. Now, onto the second major event: my left foot. Dr. Anderson seems to like cutting into my feet- on Wednesday I underwent surgery on my left foot to lower my arch and straighten out the foot. They told us to be at the hospital by 1:00 AM, but because of a delay in some other surgery, I didn’t go under til about 5:30 or 6:00. It was a quick surgery- Dr Anderson said it only took about an hour and a half. It took me a while to wake up, and get well enough to go home. I got home at about 1:00 Thursday morning.
I can’t tell you how tired I am of TV. College football is the only thing keeping me sane. Watching OU toast Texas Tech, only to struggle against OSU tonight has been fun. The BYU/Utah game I am glad I was drugged for. I’m sick of the BCS- thank heavens for a president who wants a playoff system. Well, my foot is really starting to hurt, so I’m gonna sign off. Cheerio!
