About 6 months ago I became interested in large format photography. I had been shooting medium format (6x4.5mm) for quite a while and liked it a lot. And although I don't consider 'bigger is better' as a universal truth, it seemed interesting to go for larger formats. Being very tight on a budget it was no option to walk into the European equivalent to B&H and ask for a brand new system.
I ran into an online offer for a Burke & James 5x7 field camera. The price was low, which was explained by the fact that the bellows were probably better in letting light in than to keep it out. In the spur of the moment I decided to buy this baby and try to somehow make some bellows myself. By that time I also came across the article by Kevin Bourque on the resoration of his 8x10 Burke & James (see front page). This served as a great inspiration to show off the beautiful wood underneath the navy grey paint. During the process I made some pictures and I thought it might be useful to show them here...
Since Kevin has produced an excellent article, I'll not try to repeat it here. I'm just gonna show some pictures with some very short description with them. For all the details for each step you better read Kevin's article. In total I'll post 7 steps. Please wait with replying until I'm finished, so it's easy to read everything.
This first post shows some 'before' pictures. As can be seen, quite a lot of hopeless attempts were made to try to get the bellows light proof.
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