Speed Graphic shutter

[Neal Shields]

There is one camera that I forgot, and I am looking at the origional Graflex press release.

There was the "Super Speed Graphic" which was a metal bodied camera with a 1/1000 second leaf shutter, (list price in 1960 $449.50, which we have already talked about, but there was also a "Speed Graphic Model 1000" which was a top range finder wood bodied, leather covered camera with a the 1/1000 leaf shutter. In essence a "Crown Graphic" with the "Super speed shutter". List price $379.50 with a 135mm optar 4.5

This is all from the Sept 1960 Graflex "trade notes". They also show the "Super Graphic" which was a metal bodied camera with the normal shutter.

[Rider]

The Super Speed with the 1/1000 leaf shutter, is that shutter independent of any lens you put on? Are there lens limitations?

If it's a Pacemaker model with rear shutter, it's a Pacemaker Speed. The Crown had a shallower body (and could thus accept about 15 mm shorter focal length lenses) specifically because it didn't have the focal plane shutter; it was the focal plane shutter (and accompanying differences in the body) that was the sole significant distinction between the Crown and Pacemaker Speed.

As Mark posted, the only model called a "Speed" that didn't have a focal plane shutter was the Super Speed, so called because of the 1/1000 leaf shutter (few of which are still operational, and without that shutter the camera is properly called a Super Graphic). No other model without focal plane shutter was ever sold as a Speed Graphic in the roughly fifty years from the original introduction of the "top-handle" Speed Graphic (the model with the small lens board) in 1928 until the Super tooling was sold to Toyo and the Graphic name finally dropped entirely.

[Mark Sampson]

Rider, The Super Speed Graphic came with a 135/4.7 Graflex Optar lens, mounted in the 1/1000 shutter. It had a small built-in lenshood which you twisted in order to cock the shutter. It has a bad reputation for unreliability. (On the only one I have direct experience with, the shutter blades had chewed each other up.) It was considered unrepairable 20 years ago...and from what I remember of the lenshood design, few other optics would fit. You could ask SK Grimes what they think; I'm sure they will have had some history with it.

[Rider]

Is the focal plane shutter on the speed graphic repairable? What do you look for in such a beast?

[Dave Parker]

Yes, it is repairable and has been reliable for almost 90 years now!