Up the Ante

Here is a picture of my new toy.  This isn't mine, but mine looks exactly like it. A 1940's Speed Graphic 4"x5" with a 7" Kodak Aero Ektar lens.  I got it from the shop yesterday and walked around with it.  Went to the camera shop.  Strangers came up to look at it and ask questions.  That's what I want.  An oddity.  An icon.  But now I'm terrified.  We set it up and started going through it all, then tried to make some pictures with long outdated Polaroid 55 film.  The image isn't just backwards but upside down.  Nothing is easy.  The front of the camera will tilt a bit and the plate a bit more, and there is a little swivel to it as well.  There is so much potential that it may show up my limited abilities.  I am daunted.  I will have to un-daunt myself.

Some of you will be glad.  There may be some photographs of a different type showing up here.  Maybe not soon or soon enough for you since I will be shooting film and have to send it to a lab in a town one hundred miles away which means quite a delay in the process.  Time lag.  I will need time to figure out how to work with the images even after I learn to make them.  My Kingdom for some Polaroid 4"x5" film!  As it is, the camera can't shoot with the 4"x5" Fuji packfilm adapter, so no instant results.

And the camera will not work with a flash, so there will be none of that.  Perhaps.  I may figure something out.

The Aero Ektar lens was made for aerial photography.  They were mounted in cameras in the bottom of World War II bombers.  In the 1940s, they didn't know as much about radiation, and they put some rare earth stuff into the glass to enhance its properties.  This lens has thorium and is radioactive.  I am taking it to a lab with a Geiger Counter on Monday just to see, though I've already read up on the potential hazards of being around it.

I might go to Miami next weekend to try it "On the Street."  I want to see what I can do.  I'll practice this week if I can.  Like now.  The sun is up.  Light, camera. . . .