A weird little view camera
I saw this on Pinterest:
It might be a fake ? It looks like a wooden body view camera with a Hasselblad film back and possibly the lens and bellows are from an old roll film camera ?
But there was this question:
How do you know when it is in focus?
If it's like my old B&J press camera you do the following:
1) put in the slide for the film back, this prevents the film from being exposed
2) take off the film back
3) put on the ground glass back
4) frame and focus the shot with the shutter open.
Then reverse the process to take a picture
5) close the shutter
6) set the aperture / shutter speed for the correct exposure
7) take off the ground glass back
8) put on the film back
9) take out the slide
10) take the picture
View camera users tend to be very deliberate people who use tripods :)
This got me thinking about my B&J camera. It was made in Chicago ! It had a wooden body, 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 size film. I bought it from a guy who was a wedding photographer in Wauwatosa in the 20th century. The lens was a 101 mm Kodak Ektar F4.5 with a Synchro-Rapid 800 shutter (oohh la la !). The Synchrorapid 800 was supposed to be the fastest leaf shutter made at 1/800th of a second. Most leaf shutters only go up to 1/500th of a second.
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| no viewfinder => to me this means it's a view camera |
It might be a fake ? It looks like a wooden body view camera with a Hasselblad film back and possibly the lens and bellows are from an old roll film camera ?
But there was this question:
How do you know when it is in focus?
If it's like my old B&J press camera you do the following:
1) put in the slide for the film back, this prevents the film from being exposed
2) take off the film back
3) put on the ground glass back
4) frame and focus the shot with the shutter open.
Then reverse the process to take a picture
5) close the shutter
6) set the aperture / shutter speed for the correct exposure
7) take off the ground glass back
8) put on the film back
9) take out the slide
10) take the picture
View camera users tend to be very deliberate people who use tripods :)
This got me thinking about my B&J camera. It was made in Chicago ! It had a wooden body, 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 size film. I bought it from a guy who was a wedding photographer in Wauwatosa in the 20th century. The lens was a 101 mm Kodak Ektar F4.5 with a Synchro-Rapid 800 shutter (oohh la la !). The Synchrorapid 800 was supposed to be the fastest leaf shutter made at 1/800th of a second. Most leaf shutters only go up to 1/500th of a second.
The B&J camera also came with two Graflex 120 roll film backs so that was much more convenient than using cut film.
I believe it is the Watson model:
source: https://www.butkus.org/chinon/b&j_press/b&j_press.htm
I was very surprised to see the testimonial from Arthur Fellig aka Weegee:
Weegee was a very famous 20th century photographer, here is his wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weegee
Weegee seems to have used many different cameras but still it's fun to know that he had a B&J 4x5 camera as well.
I'm not sure of the last time I even looked at the B&J camera - it produced nice pictures but it just was not as convenient as a 35mm camera.
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm
Weegee seems to have used many different cameras but still it's fun to know that he had a B&J 4x5 camera as well.
I'm not sure of the last time I even looked at the B&J camera - it produced nice pictures but it just was not as convenient as a 35mm camera.
Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm
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