Taming the Beast: Part 1

I’m in a predicament of my own making

He made me an offer I should have refused.

I was at a camera swap meet staged by Sally Baghdassarian above her store, Pro Photo, in Washington, DC, on a Saturday afternoon. The space was crowded with tables cluttered with all sorts of gear, pro and amateur, ancient and new. In one corner stood an old wooden tripod supporting a heavy leather box.

I was drawn to it like the proverbial moth to a flame. It was a Graflex 3A camera, circa 1910, with a Baush & Lomb 210 f/4.5 Tessar lens.

The owner, Reed George, was eager to explain it to me. Originally built for long-obsolete 122 roll film, taking 3 ¼ x 5 ½ images, he had rigged it to take 120 film. It worked, and to prove it he had an example picture of a group of friends. The 120 film, stretched across the larger frame, turned it into a sort of pano camera.

The very last thing I needed was another film camera. Even the low price tag — $100 for the whole setup with tripod — wasn’t tempting.

Then came the selling job. Reed was unscrupulously aided and abetted by my good friend Ron Hoffer, who insisted I had to have it. (He had just bought three cameras at the meet himself, so I think he was trying to offload some of his guilt.) Reed said he wasn’t lugging the thing back home, no matter what. It had been decorating his home for too long. Ron said I should buy it and write an article for Live View.

Finally, Reed said I could take the whole thing for $50. It was the offer I should have refused.

But I didn’t.

Left: Reed George and me having just completed the deal. (Photo by Ron Hoffer) Right: A 1903 ad for the Graflex 3A

Notice the price. This camera cost $124 when it launched in 1916, equivalent to $3,700 today. I had indeed gotten a bargain. Notice also what I consider the camera’s “proof of life” photo, sitting over the lens. Proof it worked. It was taken by Reed after he adapted it to 120 film.

So here I am with what I call the Beast. Reed had cleaned it up a bit before the show and had lubricated the shutter. I haven’t put film through it yet. Part 2 of this story will present my results, along with what I hope is progress on the camera’s restoration.

That’s the thing about the world’s remaining stock of old cameras. They are a finite resource, never to be built again. Mechanisms malfunction and bodies decay. The casualties provide parts for the survivors. The population dwindles.

I have inadvertently adopted a 120-year-old orphan with special needs. I want to pass it down to the next generation as best I can.

A couple of days after I bought it, I took the Beast back to Pro Photo to get advice.

Sally was there and remembered the camera well. She had planned to buy it if it hadn’t sold. I felt encouraged — a common purpose.

I had questions. How could I clean the leather? What should I use to oil the gears and rails? Saddle soap would be fine, she said. But don’t use WD-40 anywhere. She would recommend the right lubricants. She could even produce some 3D-printed parts. She suggested I start the restoration myself and then bring the camera in for deeper work.

What it is and how it works

Here’s the camera with lens extended and the viewing hood raised.

Camera set up for use, showing it from the shutter mechanism side.

It’s exciting to realize that this is truly a single-lens reflex camera, one of the earliest. The huge horizontal mirror actually flips up automatically when the shutter is released. The 3A belongs to the second generation of Graflex cameras — the generation that established Graflex’s reputation among professional photographers.

These cameras were originally the product of the Folmer & Schwing Manufacturing Company, founded in 1887. They actually started out making bicycles, but their camera line attracted the Eastman Kodak Company, which bought them in 1898. After an antitrust action, Kodak spun them off again in 1926 as the Folmer Graflex Company. Large cameras became a dying business after the 1950s, and the business finally succumbed in the 1970s.

This one is really in quite good shape. The leather is worn at the corners, but none of it is actually missing. The bellows are light-tight, according to Reed. The front standard and the rails need cleaning. They are hard to move out of their folded position to latch onto the rails. Cleaning and lubrication should fix that, but it might also require dismantling and soaking in solvent.

The lens looks good.

Front standard and close-up of the lens itself

Back when this camera was built, manufacturers often identified lenses by the format they covered, not by focal length. Hardly ideal, since lenses are interchangeable. Apparently, other focal lengths were available, but in practice they weren’t used much. Most photographers stuck with what came with the camera.

As far as I can tell, this lens’s diaphragm has 16 blades. It’s beautifully circular. The glass is uncoated, of course. Coatings weren’t invented for another 30 years.

The most mysterious part of the camera is its shutter. Left on my own, I doubt I would have ever figured it out. Fortunately, Reed included a 1950s book with a section on how to work these antiques.

Left: Focal plane shutter, showing a one-quarter exposure aperture. You can see the shutter controls on the right. Right: Shutter controls with labels

Believe it or not, it actually makes sense.

The top panel of controls includes a key that winds up the curtains until the chosen aperture width is available to swipe across the frame. Narrow apertures produce less exposure, wider ones more. The lower panel sets the curtain’s tension (speed). Higher tensions move the curtain faster across the frame.

You select different combinations of slot widths and curtain tensions to produce different effective shutter speeds. It’s all laid out on the table riveted to the back of the viewing hood.

The shutter speed table of apertures and tensions

This camera, released in 1903, had a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. Think of that. The Hasselblad C/M of 1970 had a maximum shutter speed of 1/500th.

Then there’s the tripod. It is solid, made of wood. All the metal parts are rusted out, but buffing and sandpaper will improve that. Maybe they could be replaced, but I’ll brush them up instead — maintain the original. And the wood should rejuvenate with the help of Murphy’s soap and some furniture polish.

The head of the tripod, including rusted metal parts. The label says “№2: Korona Folding Studio Stand”

So what will taking pictures with this camera be like? That’s the next step. I need to get some new parts to make using 120 film a little more convenient. But I won’t make any irreversible mods. Perhaps 122 film will be available again someday. Who knows.

Stay tuned

There’s more to come. Next step, clean things up as best I can. Then get Zane Grant (Sally’s repair honcho) to do the steps that require taking the camera apart. I’ll see if Sally can produce some 3D parts I have in mind to make 120 film work more conveniently.

An interesting summer project, all in all. I feel like a conservator in an art museum. A friend of mine who actually is a conservator told me that he usually spends more time cleaning a painting than the artist did painting it. That’s where we’re at with our photographic heritage. We need to pay it forward. Reed George improved this camera before he let it go, and I intend to do the same.

Closed up, who would know this is even a camera?

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