Shooting with bargains

[Jehu]

I guess this is a bargain. It's the first time I opened a shutter on a Large Format camera. I wanted to get into LF and I was picking up bargains when I found them. After spending about $250 on a broken Calumet 4x5, a Rodenstock 210mm lens, a couple of holders, a Majestic tripod and a Yankee daylight tank, I tried it out in my driveway. My neighbor's mailbox looked kind of interesting to me. It's built out of an old stitching machine that closed burlap bags with bailing wire.

I scanned the negative on my cheapo flatbed that would only backlight wide enough for medium format:

I was pretty impressed with the detail LF could do:

I'd call this a bargain shoot example. It's also what got me hooked.

[Robert Hughes]

The Wollensak Raptar 135 that came with my Busch Pressman D, purchased for somewhere around $100 -

Fries were extra...

[Jim Galli]

I have many......

This one done with a 13" f6.8 Conley lens that of course is a Wollensak Series 1. I call it the poor man's Cooke. It's a 2-2 + 2-2 arrangement like the more famous Cooke, but much older and no coatings. This one is nasty looking, in an un-repairable Autex shutter, and with a big chip out of one of the rear groups. Covers 11X14 nicely.

[Gordon Coale]

Elgeet f/4.5 254mm, in Alphax #4 shutter. $50 on flea bay, plus $5 for a lighter fluid CLA and $25 for SK Grimes to sell me a flange so I could mount it.

Alan -- This is the first time I've seen any one else with a 10" Elgeet. I have one of these. I just mounted it on my 4x5. It came on a Burke & James 5x7 Commercial View I traded for $17 worth of film. How do you like it?

[Steve M Hostetter]

I have many......

This one done with a 13" f6.8 Conley lens that of course is a Wollensak Series 1. I call it the poor man's Cooke. It's a 2-2 + 2-2 arrangement like the more famous Cooke, but much older and no coatings. This one is nasty looking, in an un-repairable Autex shutter, and with a big chip out of one of the rear groups. Covers 11X14 nicely.

^dats what I'm talkin about^

[eddie]

i posted this before but it fits here so well.

more to come.

i got this lens for 10 euros in paris last year. a hermagis petzval lens that only has the cemented front group...so effectively a landscape lens.

[Jim Galli]

A fun thread because I enjoy a bargain. So here's a couple more of the Ford done with a wonderful old American Optical Goerz Dagor of 10 3/4" that I got a couple of weeks ago. $76 in a Wolly Studio Shutter.

model a, weeping willows v


model a, weeping willows iv

Pretty it ain't. The lens or the car. Oh, the car was NO bargain