I have a Graphic View II and it has a 12 inch rail. I understand, now that I found this website, that it was originally equipped with a 16 inch rail.

I have a need for one of these. I wonder if it would be best to purchase one for parts or if I should bother looking for just the 16 inch rail.

Anybody have any opinions or useful websites on this? Does anyone know where I can get one?

Thanks

In fact, the original "View" has a 16-in. rail; the "View II" rail is two ins. longer. Does your 12-in. rail appear to be a user modification? I have not heard of such a thing as an OEM option, though Graflex did all kinds of surprising things.

If I were doing it, I'd probably look for a complete camera, rail and all; they are not especially hard to come by. I've not seen a rail offered separately, although you might get lucky.

The View I did in fact have a "12 inch" rail. Closer to 14 inch, but it depends on how you measure...

The View II had a 16-17 inch rail, again depends on how you measure...

To find a replacement rail would be very difficult. The rails from the View I and II are not interchangabe from what I've heard. I still haven't measured mine but there's a thread around here someplace that brings that subject up...

All you could really do nowadays is keep an eye open on ebay and hope someone parts out a camera. I bought a GVII rail last year that way. "Unfortunately", when I talked to the seller, he decided to throuw in the rest of the camera and I wound up with a fully functional GVII minus the back. I happened to have a spare back and so wound up with another GVII instead of a spare rail

But parts cameras do show up no and then and that would be about your only hope! Just make sure you need a GVII rail and your camera really isn't a GVI?

My camera has the axial tilts which tells me it's a GVII but it does in fact have a 12 in rail.

It does not look to be a user modified kind of thing, looks original. I'll do some measuring tonight.

My I was hacked by somebody. The rail was shorten and so were the bellows. Actually might work better with shorter lenses. I guess it's also lighter if you need to transport it. If your rail is short your bellows might be to. If the bellows are the normal length I wonder if you've got a travel rail. A rail intended to be used when carrying the camera with the longer rail stored. This way when you get to your location you can just put on the longer rail.Easier to haul something on a short rail. I wish I had something like that for my Calumet. The long rail is nice but makes it a serious pain to haul.

<blockquote>Hi Mctimot, </blockquote>you will sometimes find view cameras with shortened rails. I assume it's from landscape photographers that never needed to do much close focus work and got tired of working around the longer rail. <blockquote> <blockquote> Dan </blockquote> </blockquote>

Don't forget, Graflex also would modify GVI's into GVII's for customers, and they probably didn't change the rail, so you could end up with a GVII like camera with a GVI rail.

-Mike