Hi. my name is ted and I'm an 8x10 'er

[heespharm]

So i made the leap from my 4x5 shen hao to 8x10

did any of you walk into camera co-op and see the monster 8x10 camera on top of the large format display case...

well steve didn't know what it was they thought it was a burke and james.. it was 400 bucks with a couple of film holders... so I thought it looked like a good deal... i mean the bellows were good and the movements worked at least it would be a good user camera....

Turns out it was a kodak century universal... favorite camera of edward weston and AA at some point....

So i made a lens board and bought a 305 g claron in shutter (which costs more than the camera) and bought some fp4, xray and hp5 film..

getting used the camera and have refurbished all the metal parts and cleaned it up a bit and lubed the joints... next is refinishing all the wood parts by taking off the shellac and putting new shellac on...or at least tung oil....

since then I bought a berlebach and a bogen 3057 head...

I'm thinking of sticking with the 1 lens but i already have a 240 g claron which i hear can cover 8x10.. but as AA said he prefered having just one lens. 'If I have several lenses, then I never have the right lens.'

[heespharm]

and lee I blame you... hahaha thanks for the push in the right direction

[J Eddington]

so jealous!

[venchka]

Great!
So who got the Calumet C1 Green Monster?

[venchka]

Originally Posted by J Eddington

so jealous!

Just do it! You can always sell it if it was the dumbest thing you've ever done. Which I doubt.

[henrysamson]

Hey Ted,

That's great! The 8x10 club is expanding! That's a great camera BTW.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I do most of my 8x10 shooting with a 12" lens. In metric that is 304.8 mm which is pretty close to what you have. So in my opinion you're in great shape lens wise. Just go out and shoot!

Hank

[heespharm]

Originally Posted by venchka

Great!
So who got the Calumet C1 Green Monster?

Haha actually I was in there looking for that camera when I didn't see it I saw the CU

[tropicpine]

Originally Posted by heespharm

and lee I blame you... hahaha thanks for the push in the right direction

[heespharm]

century universal... still have some work but the hardware is almost done... next is the front standard and bed hardware and re shellac the wood


_MG_2612 by Heespharm, on Flickr


8x10 korona i'm in the process of restoring... did the hardware, and stripped the shellac and used tung oil on it.. it would be complete except that the guy who is making my lensboard that can take shenhao lensboards is taking forever... the only caveat is that the ground glass has a big brown stain on it... tried cleaning it and it won't go away!!! I have a spare piece of 8x10 ground glass but it's my century universal backup glass


_MG_2613 by Heespharm, on Flickr

I've also found that the hand straps from my broken polaroid 110a's are perfect size for both cameras

funny part is that I paid more for the korona than the century universal... I think i got a good price for both

[k onassis]

Originally Posted by venchka

Great!
So who got the Calumet C1 Green Monster?

oooh, I loved that thing.

I want to say a school got it.

When it came in, I was jumping up and down, all;

"We should really take a couple test shots....lemmelemmelemmelemme"

Too bad there isn't much I haven't photographed in that store. But at least I got to do some 8x10... :)

[heespharm]

So another update... I got an email back from rich at south Bristol views.... Turns out I've been looking at the serial number upside down... Instead of 688681 it's 189889.. Which dates it to about 1933.... I'd better take real good care of it