[LargeFormat] Re: Really Large format 30 x 40

[Diane Maher]

I loved reading that story! Thanks for posting!

Diane


---- Original Message ----
Message: 16
From: LNPhoto <LNPhoto@twmi.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [LargeFormat] REALLY Large Format  30x40
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:10:48 -0500
To: largeformat@f32.net
Reply-To: largeformat@f32.net

I"m not sure which version you know.  I'll tell my version, you can 
tell his.

The camera sat in the lobby of the Gannett building (aka Photo 
building) at Rochester Institute of Technology for many years including 
the years I was there. I remember marveling at it and even asked a 
couple of old timers about it, but nobody knew anything about it

A couple years back I called master tinkerer PRof Andy Davidhazy about 
a Bausch & Lomb microscope camera I had found and wondered if there was 
a market up there for it.  He responded that not only was there no room 
for it, but that he had a bigger white...er  black elephant that he 
couldn't get rid of.... It seems the lobby was being refurbished and 
this camera was no longer welcome.

I told him under threat of life was he was not to allow this camera to 
be destroyed.  If nothing else I would rescue it. As I hung up the 
phone I had madcap visions of shooting little league groups with it by 
putting this beast on some sort of scissor jack in the back of a van a 
la Professor Fate's car. He couldn't think of what to do with it and I 
have to admit I don't know why I didn't think to tell him to call the 
Eastman House.

Luckily for me somebody did.


Todd Gustavson curator of cameras at Geo Eastman House got a call, I 
assume from PRof. Davidhazy, about this very large, very old camera 
that had lost it's lease in the lobby and if somebody didn't take this 
thing, it would lose its lease on life.  Todd  was torn between making 
space and saving a piece of history (the camera is 24 x 36 INCHES in 
format, made between 1897 and 1904 and had a Taylor Taylor Hobson 
mammoth plate Rapid Portrait Lens on it from about 1870.)  Todd looked 
into the records and found that a camera with a similar description had 
once been in the collection. So he went and rescued the camera and 
within a couple of hours found the extension rail that fit it AT the 
Eastman house!

It seems the camera collection was a very poor orphan division for many 
years (Ken Hough will say it still is)  there was no room to keep 
cameras at the house, so the previous curators would "loan" cameras out 
for storage.  This camera had been a part of the Eastman collection 
many years before, but poor records and bad memories nearly lost it 
forever.

And frankly its in a much better place there than here.  If I had 
implemented my plan and rescued the camera, I would've had to convince 
my wife that it really was small enough to fit in the house and that I 
was too big to sleep in it outside. A tough sell on both counts.

Les