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Victor Samou Wong
3-Feb-2006, 22:17
So I managed to score, thanks to my sub-elite epay search skills a 5x7 korona camera that I thought was trashed a few weeks ago for less than 50 buckaroos. I thought it was trashed and mangled, and as it turns out, it was sort of... Missing two knobs and a lens board, But the bellows ended up being just dusty and were near perfect. After stripping and re-oiling the wood, it looks fantastic. I just can't keep my hands off the thing... I keep poking the front tilt. The funny thing is that I was going to resell it, but now that I've refinished it, I just can't! Terrible eh? Has this ever happened to you?

Cheers

medform-norm
4-Feb-2006, 04:43
I dunno - was the idea of reselling not an extra reason for getting it in the first place, like that extra argument you needed to go ahead and buy it anyway? And maybe you didn't want to admit that this might be for yourself, not for profit? I find that this thought, "I can always resell the item without a loss", helps me over my hesitation towards spending money in the first place more often than not. This is what on-line auctioning is doing to people: you're as much a buyer and a seller nowadays, before eBay I was hardly ever a seller, didn't know why/where/how or it was too much trouble to make it worth the effort.

Christopher Keth
4-Feb-2006, 06:29
Aren't those gorgeous cameras? I bought Jim Galli's 5x7 Korona II a couple weeks ago and have been very antsy to give it a go. It's my first large format camera so I have to do blasted things like wait for a lens and holders, etc. I just need to find a 5x7 back for it, now. It came with a 4x5 reducing back and I'd like to have both.

matthew blais
4-Feb-2006, 07:21
They are beautiful cameras, as I got mine off the bay a little over a year ago, painstakingly took it all apart and reglued and refinished and made lensboards and even polished the nickel off the brass. Once oiled and waxed it was very nice to look at, and I used it for over a year. This one had the front tilts, swings, etc. Now that I have a more "modern" 4x5, I still can't get rid of it. The 30 or so hours I spent on it and being my first "love"...well, going to have to keep it.

They make a great display piece, more so than a newer design. That old cherry wood with it's patina...shiny brass..
Keep it.

Michael Graves
4-Feb-2006, 08:32
Yeah. When I was out in St. Louis a few years back, my family wasn't going to be able to follow for at least three months. So I'm stuck in a 1-bedroom efficiency with no friends and no family in what has to be the nastiest city on the planet. Then I saw an ad for a camera show. Had to go.
And there it was. The case it was in was shot. the finish was flaking off the wood and the brass was all black. You would have thought it was anodized. It was an old Eastman 2D 8x1. Some old brass lens fitted onto a packard shutter. The dealer was asking $100.00. At the time, I was trying to pay the mortgage on my house back home and a St. Louis apartment rental, feed myself and send money back home to the family. He might as well have been asking ten thousand. But I took his card.
The next weekend, I'm down in the southern part of Missouri and see an ad for an auction. One of the listings was "A bunch of old cameras". I figured that would draw a crowd of collectors with an appealing description like that, so I went. I was the only bidder, at $1.00. Most of it was junk, but there was an old Contessa Nettel 3 1/4 by 4 1x4 and a Voightlander Bessa with a Color Skopar 105. I knew both of those had value to collectors, even though to me they were worthless as an ejection seat in a helicopter.
I thought about that guy from the show, dug up his card, called him up and said, "do you take trades?" He said, "Yup." And when he saw those two cameras, his eyes lit right up. He asked what I wanted. I asked if he still had that old 8x10 from the show. "Yup." He said I'd have to put some cash of the table if I wanted that one, so I just said, "Bummer", and headed for the door. Before the day was over, I had the camere and lens AND he threw in four film holders.
Every night when I got home from work, I started on that camera and worked on it for at least an hour. I took it completely apart and polished each and every brass piece. I refinished the wood. Oddly enough, the bellows were in fine condition. I hand-rubbed the wood finish with oil until it shone. When I bought the thing, I figured when I was done, I could sell it for $300.00 and pay off some of the bills I was accumulating while in disaster mode. When I was finished and I looked at that thing gleaming on the tripod.....
That was ten years ago. I shot six sheets of film last weekend with it. I have since then made three more lens holders and acquired a 240 Ilex Paragon that just barely covers the format, a 360 Congo that covers it with room to spare. I used to have a 159 9.6 wollensak, but after I got the 8x10M, I moved that one over to a Toyo recessed lensboard.

Dan Fromm
4-Feb-2006, 08:49
Hmm. Many cases of creeping accumulism around. The disease is more common than we think. Buy it with resale in mind, fall in love, ...

Dan Jolicoeur
4-Feb-2006, 09:45
So you are the one driving the prices up. I have been looking for a 2d for awhile, but gave up for the price I was told to pay for one has been either doubled or tripled. I keep hearing the stories of great 2d's or the like going for as little as $200, not that $200 is chicken scratch, but many are paying more than I am willing to pay. Once someone else bids the price keeps going up and up. A farmer told me one he could not sell a cucumber for $.15 each, but could sell them all day long for 6 for a dollar?

Michael Graves
4-Feb-2006, 13:37
C'mon, Dan! Don't blame me for today's prices. Like I said, that was ten years ago. "Real" photographers actually used large format professionally. Nowaday's it's just the "Fine Art" photographers, like Kirk (I bought your book, by the way. Gorgeous work!!!!) and the wannabe's like me that use it.

Paul Ewins
4-Feb-2006, 18:59
I bought a "broken" 4x5 Speed Graphic a few months back just to get a few parts. As usual, the graflock back was missing, the FP shutter was broken and the guide track for one of the front struts was also missing. I took the bits I wanted, the strap and the rangefinder eyepiece extension, and looked at what was still a potentially useful camera and decided that it had to be rescued somehow.

After much contemplation I decided to rebuild it to shoot in portrait format, because I find my other SG rather awkward to hold when tipped over on its side. Rebuilding a broken camera that I already owned seemed better than splashing out a few hundred dollars on a Super Graphic. So after much cutting and filling I've stipped out the redundant shutter pieces, rotated the bellows 90 degrees and am almost finished building a bottom loading spring back specifically for grafmatics. Along the way I've also reskinned it, but I think I may have used leather that is too thin so I may have to do that again. The leather was a bargain bin piece for $2 and is a subtle shade of acid yellow :-)

The end result would alarm some of the graflex purists (especially the leather) but remember it was already missing the graflok back so there was no real way of rebuilding it to original specs.