8x10 fatif camera

[jnanian]

i am thinking of buying an 8x10 camera, and have stumbled upon a fatif 8x10. i am not sure what model it is, the store that has it emailed me images of it ...

does it take standard lensboards? are there any things i should think about before purchasing it? ( i have never seen standards &c configured like this camera's, it is rigid, and can it give a full range of movements for architectural type work?) if i run into problems with it, is it easy to obtain parts here in the usa? i don't speak italian and tried to look at the website for fatif, but it didn't really help much

thank you in advance for your help!

john

[Ellis Vener]

try: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003CUW

[Ellis Vener]

also try:

http://www.thefstop.com/forums/LFForum/posts/1425.html

http://www.fatif.com/fotografia_professionale/ds2.php

there are some other links if you do a google.com search. I recall that they had a very solid reputation but didn't have good distribution in the USA

[Ernest Purdum]

I think you could try a query in English to info@fatif.com. Most European companies have little difficulty corresponding in English.

[jnanian]

thanks for the links!

i had read jorge's questions and responses ..

my main question now is if i am going to be able to find parts/lensboards &c without a problem . since the website for the company is in italian, and it only had info on a 4x5 camera i wasn't able to figure anything there ...

thanks again! -john

[tim atherton]

it does have to be one of the funkiest looking 8x10 cameras - those oval lensboards, streamlined knobs - very retro-italian design...

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

John, I think is a beautiful camera and certainly one of the best designs I have ever seen. I decided against only because I could not find a source for lens boards. They are not easy to find in the US and I did not feel like waiting and hoping to find them on E bay. Of course afterwards I thought about having SK grimes make me a Fatif to Technika adapter, but it was too late since I already had gotten another camera. Perhaps this would be an option for you.

[Mark Sampson]

Lens & Repro used to sell Fatif, they mentioned parts and lensboards in their ad maybe last year. Somewhere I have a Fatif catalog that I picked up at a Photo Expo long ago, don't think I could find it though, haven't seen it in a while.

[andrea milano]

Well, the Fatif is just about the most popular view-camera in Italy and probably the only large format camera that ever was designed by a famous designer of the 60ties and 70ties like Joe Colombo! This in itself makes it a cult-object. The product of the vision and work of Ingegner Quintino Piana, who sadly passed away a few months ago, this camera is one of the sturdiest camera that you'll ever encounter. I have already spoken about its merits on the previous version of this site and probably there are still traces in the archives of that particular thread. It was my first camera (4x5 version) and I've used it extensively at the Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan where I studied photography.The question of the lens boards is a relatively easy to solve if you order a few (phoning the company is better than e-mailing not so much because they do not speak English-because they do!-but rather because I think that since the death of his owner, the company is undergoing a re-structuring led by the son of the "ingegnere",) and your problem is solved. I've owned a number of FATIF equipment (Camers, Light-banks, Tripod and so on )and everything was well made and works to this day!

[domenico Foschi]

Sturdy, lots of movements , great for studio , i used it for a while as a field camera ......I strongly recommend to only use it 9in studio . A few years ago i bought lensboards from Midwest Photo Exchange , they were actually making them , or someone was making them for the store ..., all i know is that they were not original Fatif , but worked fine .