New Stand, New Lens
Early December, a flickr friend tipped me off to an estate sale on Camano Island. He sent me a link and commented on the huge camera for sale. A Scientest holding many patents for optics had recently died and he collected cameras and lenses. I talked my wife into going and I managed to get the day off to go on a mission to get that camera. The camera was a 1930’s Century 8 x 10 Master Studio Camera on a Century Master Studio Stand. The Camera had a very large and very desireable brass Taylor-Hobson Cooke 18 inch Anastigmat series II f4.5 lens on it. The camera outfit was in mint condition and it looked barley used. The solid mahogany stand and camera were so beautiful and the lens was so clean and shiny. I haggled with the lady selling the camera and settled on a price. My wife managed to bet a sweet teak table and chairs too- there was so much cool scientific stuff!
When I got the stand back to the shop I quickly put the 11 x 14 Deadorff on the stand and the bed fit like a glove. The new stand is much more solid and has much better gears than the old one and had the ability to apply more tilt to the camera bed. This one still had the original wheels and cast iron but it was missing the floor stop handle. I managed to take the one off the old stand install it on the new one. The Century 8 x 10 was modified to take my 8 inch rounded Deardorff boards and I also modified the back to accept the Deardorff 8×10, 5×7, 4×5 and 5×8 sliding 8 x 10 backs.
