Help in identifying a Cambo 8x10

[Scott Bintner]

I recently aquired an 8x10 camera at a bargian price off ebay. I knew when getting it that it was a Cambo, had the square monorail (I believe SC1/Calumet style--ruled), tripod mount, good bellows, and front and rear standards. I tried doing some research on it to see exactly which variety of Cambo it was, by visual inspection, and had little luck. The tell tale signature it seems to posess is L-shaped standards instead of U-shaped standards. The lensboard and groundglass are definately locked into Cambo style mounts (SC and above--not the Cadet variety)

The "Very Important Thing" I overlooked when I did all this, was fail to realize it has no swings, tilts, shifts, or rises. I made the assumption that since it was a monorail, it had all of these. I will take the full blame for this omission in forethought, which leads me to my question of "What type of Camera is it?"

[Paul Moshay]

That is a most interesting problem. I don't know that camera at all but I cannot imagine a monorail camera that has no movements. Are you sure it is not an enlarger??? ;-) Could you upload a photo of it so we could see just what it looks like, I'm intrigued. Paul

[jantman]

The only thing that I can think of, if it's NOT an enlarger, and you're SURE that it's Cambo brand, is that it could be some sort of copy camera.

[Dave Lee]

One possibility is it a copy style camera. Another way to ID the camera is to do Ebay searches for Cambo and check out the photos until you find a match. It is more reliable to verify the model name in several searches since Ebayers often mix up the model numbers.