Graflex Century Graphic (1947-1970)

The Graflex Century Graphic is a miniature press camera that was made by Graflex Inc. in Rochester, New York, from 1947 to 1970. Press cameras were made to meet the needs of newspaper photographers and are of robust construction.

Front

Rear

The Century folds into a fairly compact package. The photographer presses a hidden button on the top of the camera to release the lens bed and opens it until it locked into place. He then draws out the lens standard until it hits the infinity stops on the rails and locks it into place. The camera has limited movements on the front: rise, shift and tilt, and the bed can be dropped. The drop bed and front rise are useful to get the front of the lens bed out of the picture with wide angle lenses. The shifts are available only with lenses that have focal lengths longer than normal because otherwise the front lens standard hits the lens bed struts.

The camera has an open frame viewfinder and could come with an optional optical viewfinder. Focusing is by ground glass with the camera on a tripod, by the focusing scale located on the lens bed or by an optional Kalart coupled range finder.

The Century could be customized with a variety of lenses and shutters. This example has an f/4.5 103mm Graflex Trioptar lens made by Wollensak in a Graflex Century shutter also made by Wollensak. This was the lowest price combination. Better lenses and shutters made by Eastman Kodak Company also were available, for example the f/4.5 101mm Kodak Ektar in a Kodak Flash Supermatic shutter. Other lenses by manufacturers such as Zeiss or Schneider, and shutters such as the Compur Rapid were imported from Germany. The size of the lens board and the length of the bellows draw limit the diameter and focal length of the lenses that can be used. The focusing scales on the lens bed need to be matched to the lens for scale focusing to work. The Kalart rangefinder also needs to be adjusted to match the lens. Ground glass focusing works with any lens without any further adjustments.

A Century Graphic came with a removable ground glass back for 2-1/4" x 3-1/4" sheet film in holders, two sheets to a holder, and had a Graflok back for the optional roll film holders. The "23" roll film holder is for eight 2-1/4" x 3-1/4" pictures on 120 film. A "22" roll film holder for twelve 2-1/4" square pictures on 120 film also was available. The roll film holders had dark slides, which allowed the film holders to be removed mid-roll without wasting a picture. If you don't want to handle individual sheets of film in a darkroom, a roll film holder is desirable.

You needed to have the camera on a tripod to use ground glass focusing. You opened the shutter, focused and composed the picture on the ground glass as in a view camera, closed the shutter, set the taking aperture and shutter speed, inserted the loaded sheet film holder, pulled out the dark slide on the sheet film holder, exposed the film, replaced the dark slide and took the exposed film to the darkroom in the holder. Hand-holding the camera, you would focus using the distance scale on the lens bed or the Kalart range finder and compose the picture using the open frame finder or the optical finder. Using the roll film holder is like using any other roll film camera. When you use the roll film holder it puts your eye a little farther from the optical finder than when you use  the ground glass back.

This camera attracts attention when out in public. Unfortunately the bellows on my 70 year old example has developed a light leak and it is out of commission right now. I have a replacement bellows and just need to get around to putting in the new one. The half-silvered glass beam splitter on the rangefinder has tarnished and the focusing patch is only faintly reflected. Deteriorated beam splitters are common.  Replacing the beam splitter is possible, but requires cutting a replacement to fit.

A gnarly tree in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, pre-light leak.

Advertisement, Popular Photography, April, 1950.

Kodak VR35 K12 (1986-1989)

Eastman Kodak Company stopped making 35 mm cameras in 1969 owing to the phenomenal success of the cartridge loading Instamatic cameras. The popularity of cartridge loading cameras gradually declined as compact point-and-shoot cameras with autofocus and automatic film loading became available.  Kodak re-introduced a new line of point-and-shoot 35 mm cameras in 1986 and discontinued the last of the Instamatic cameras in 1988. This camera was manufactured for Kodak by Chinon Industries. Kodak had a close relationship with Chinon and eventually bought the company in 2004.

Front - Closed

Front - Open

Back

The K12 has a plastic body with a flip up flash. The lens is a four element, f/2.8 35 mm Kodak Ektar lens with an aspherical lens element that was made by Eastman in Rochester, NY. The shutter is electronically timed from 1/8 to 1/500 second. The film is advanced automatically after each picture and rewinds automatically at the end of the roll. Flipping up the flash uncovers the lens and turns on the camera. Auto focusing is by an infrared sensor through two "eyes" next to the lens. Exposure is programmed auto exposure. Film speed is set to ASA 100, 200, 400 or 1000 by the DX code on the film cassette. Operation is almost completely automatic. This is a camera in the tradition of the first Kodak of 100 years earlier - "You press the button and we do the rest." The controls are the shutter button, a self-timer switch, a switch for fill flash in daylight, and a switch to rewind the film mid-roll. The flash fires automatically in low light. The camera takes a now-discontinued size 323, 9V lithium battery. A 9V transistor radio battery will power the camera, but runs down pretty quickly. The use of a transistor radio battery was anticipated by Kodak because the battery compartment has contacts for the transistor radio and a sticker to show the right way to put it in. The list price was an expensive $200 in 1986. It was discontinued in 1989. They are cheap today. The K12 was the second best of the VR35s. The top of the line K14 "Medalist" was similar, but had in addition a data back to imprint the date on the negative, and a switch to turn off the flash. The bottom of the line VR35 K2 had a hot shoe for flash, a fixed focus, fixed aperture lens, a single shutter speed, and manual film advance and rewind.

The VR35 name ties in with the Kodak VR-G film that came out about the same time. VR technology is still used in current Kodak film.