Hello,

I am in a dispute over a Crown Graflex camera that I recently bought on Ebay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...ht_3957wt_1141

When it arrived I noticed that the top half of the bellows were covered in black tape and that the lens had no bulb setting, neither of these points are mentioned in the item description. The seller maintains that he had no need to mention the tape as he described the item condition as 'seller refurbished' and that the tape was clearly visible in the images. I did show the ebay listing to two colleagues who own 5x4 cameras before I made the purchase and none of us noticed the tape as the bellows are also black.

I also asked the seller how he kept the shutter open in order to set up a shot and focus using the glass plate and he replied, 'as to the B setting that shutter never had one but i learned to shove the timer a little way past 1 and sort of hold the shutter on the cable release'. I tried this with a cable release but found I had to manually hold the lens with one hand to stop it from closing. This would make doing long exposures near impossible, something I had bought the camera for.

I have many years of experience of photography, being a full time lecturer in the subject, but lack experience of large format cameras. Being new to this forum and knowing nobody, I would greatly appreciate your impartial opinions on the following two questions to put my mind at ease;

  1. Even if he thought it was clearly visible, should the seller have mentioned the tape on the bellows in the item description?
  2. How normal is it for a lens on a large format camera to have no means of keeping the shutter open indefinitely?