Graflex.org

[Lobalobo]

Thanks again for useful information, and thanks for the kind words, particularly to C. Henry (and thanks too for the private message that I just read). This site has been extraordinary helpful to me on many issues. With the help of those who post here, I am one part away from setting up my Crown Graphic as a light, inexpensive substitute for a view camera (albeit one with limited movements).

As for Dan, I am not looking for sweetness, and believe me that my ego isn't tied up in what someone I don't know says on the Internet about me. This is a hobby, though, and I find it less than enjoyable to be condescended to, and so I asked Dan to save his time (which I know must be valuable) and cease corresponding with me or on my behalf. To Dan and those who support his tone, I respect their knowledge and am thankful for their willingness to help; I wish them nothing but the best, but I also wish nothing to do with them.

Unless the last paragraph has made me an outcast on this site, I'll stay with it and I hope one day to have enough knowledge to pass along help to other beginners, to repay the debt owed to all of you.

Finally, as to my screen name, the name is nothing more than nonsense syllables strung together for a name in a story I made up for my daughter a few years ago when she was five years old. The name has become a source of family amusement and I adopted it as a screen name for that reason only. No attempt to be "cutesy" and I hadn't even noticed that it could be translated to "wolf" (once or twice) until Dan pointed it out (more than once, I might add). Thanks for the education in that too, Dan.

[troublemaker]

It's all entertainment I suppose.
Don't let it bother you. I give the fellas a good thrashing now and again, but it does no good, and I'd not wish to be banished for elder abuse.

[sobahguy]

Loba, as a new Graphic user and new board member here you can hardly be expected to know terminology that is inherently baffling, even to long-time Graflex users. Hell, I was new not long ago and did my own fair share of butchering time-honored terms and procedures. Understanding it all comes only through time, patience and experience.

That said, there is a wealth (dare I say hundreds, if not thousands of years) of collective Graflex experience on this Help Board. And this experience is free for the asking. And the participants here are fine-tuned and adept at problem solving...especially Dan, as you might observe if you read a good many of his hundreds of posts. It didn't seem to me that he was condescending at all. He was asking pointed questions in a good faith effort to try to understand the exact nature of the problem that you were having, which thus would enable him and others to weigh in with proper responses which would help you.

Welcome to the world of Graphics and above all don't let this minor pettiness deter you from participating, asking questions, dispensing your own advice, sharing your experiences and enjoying your "new" camera.
This is what this website is all about...perpetuating the use, care & preservation of (IMHO) the finest line of cameras on the planet.

Cheers,
SG

[45PSS]

Some of the mentioned members raised T Rex for pets when they were young and others of us Sabertooth Tigers and they were fun pets to have and some members current have aligators and crocodiles that run freely about their homes.
Despite this there are now many free imaging hosting sites that allow one to upload a image or muptile images with linking for posting on other web sites shuch as this. I use one of these services now and its called www.imagehosting.com/ and with a few arrows pointing to the thingofagig or dohickey and whatyoumaycallits that we encounter is an option when asking questions about them. The arrows are easy to add with image editing software.
_________________
The best camera ever made is the one that YOU enjoy using and produces the image quality that satifies YOU.

[Lobalobo]

You are all very kind and I am truly grateful for the advice I've received since starting on this project. It is all free and of a sort that can't be obtained anywhere else. I truly was not offended by Dan's posting; I'm really not that sensitive. Rather, frankly, although I was grateful for his advice, which did in fact help, I was annoyed, and my responses were a way to express this without reacting in kind. Although as my wife would tell, if I could, I'd do nothing but learn photography, to earn a living, I am law professor, and Dan posts remind me of some of my senior colleagues who are of the sort seen in the movies. Their approach (and I'm not saying that this is Dan's, just that his posts remind me of them) is to make the students feel stupid before teaching them what they need. I'm not a fan of that approach, and my post was intended to express nothing more than this.

In retrospect, though, I realize it would be foolish of me, as a number of you said, to cut myself off from this community just to make a point. And so, Dan, if you are reading, please accept my apologies (honestly) for making such an issue over tone, and if I ever post a question again that you can answer, I would be most grateful for a response and you can insult me all you want first (though you might choose not to bother and I would understand). My goal, of course, is to learn enough and acquire enough experience to help someone else.

By the way, in case anyone still cares, I am still somewhat stumped by the Copal 0 retaining ring question that started all this. I have the theory down cold, now, but I can't find the right ring. The one I ordered, from B&H, had all the right specs (best I can tell) and the picture on the B&H site is exactly what I need, a flat ring. What arrived was a tube with threads on the bottom and the spanner slots in a portion at the top, which has a wider diameter than the tube. (This may be a flange, but it doesn't meet the flange description given in this string, as there are no holes for a bolt, only the slots for a spanner.) Anyone know where I can reliably get a flat Copal 0 retaining ring? I checked the sites listed in the string, but as I recally, they list only flanges, assuming that rings come with a lens (and I have confirmed that none came with mine, an issue I'd take up with the seller were he not anonymous, and in Japan).

[Dan Fromm]

www.skgrimes.com keeps #0 retaining rings in stock.

About tone and such, I wasn't offended. If I wasn't clear, I'll say it again. We communicate in the common language. New arrivals who haven't learned it but want to communicate do the best they can with what they know. When their attempts to communicate aren't clear enough, native speakers often press for further explanations. If it seemed like hectoring, I'm sorry. I had an, um, model of the problem and wanted to test it as quickly as possible.

I've been thinking about y'r problem and am back to being puzzled. I have a number of lenses that came in shutters with flanges. All of these have flanges shorter than the rear threaded section of the shutter, so there's no chance that the flange will interfere with the lens' rear cell, at least when mounted on a thin board. That your flange prevents the lens' rear cell from going into the shutter properly really bothers me. Does it do this when there's no board between it and the shutter?

Go to www.skgrimes.com and look around (click on products, then on shutters, then on Copal -- I think that's the sequence) to find the #0 shutter's dimensions. Then check yours for thickness, flange to flange. To reduce ambiguity, in this context "flange" refers the surfaces that the lens' cells should butt up against when screwed into the shutter.

I believe there was once a TV program starring John Houseman as, perhaps, the sort of law professor you have in mind. I didn't watch it, so don't know if that's the kind of behavior you're thinking of. But I was a student of Karl Brunner, who consistently tormented students who came to class unprepared. I still can't understand why some of my classmates never came to class prepared.

[Lobalobo]

Thanks, Dan. I am puzzled too. To be sure, if I find what I've been calling a flat ring, the rear cell of the lens will screw into the shutter but no part of it will touch the ring. What I purchased from B&H looks as if it would fit perfectly; the rear cell settles snugly against the top of the ring when I remove the board and just screw everything together, which, to answer your question, can be done wihtout the board. The board is barely too thick, by less than 1mm I'd estimate. The board, by the way, is from a photo supply house (I forget now which one) and looks exactly like the board that came with the camera (along with an Ilex lens attached to it). So it may be too thick, and I can't judge to mm accurately, but it seems standard to me. Anyway, I looked on Grimes' site, found the distinction between a flange and a ring, and found listings for flanges; I'll look again for a ring, or call him. Thanks again for your help. (I'd show you a picture of the flange/ring I bought to clarify further, but I don't know that this site permits attachments.)

[Joshua Szulecki]

Lobalobo,

I just want to quickly second 45PSS's suggestion regarding posting an image if you don't know the terminology. I find that a picture really is worth a thousand words, a million if the words are trying to describe an object with the words Graflex inscribed on it. And you might even consider e-mailing a picture to the vendor, if possible. I actually found a part for some device that way a few years back.

Being a technician ham radio operator, I've yet to hear anything on this site that scratches at the level of n00b-hating, condescending, and downright cruel speech that you hear on sites like eHam these days. Most of the "rudeness" on this site ends up just being miscommunication. The written word seems ill-suited for conversation. Perhaps we need a way of easily indicating tone.

Dan Fromm,

I had a law professor who took it one step further. While most would berate or at least mock you for being unprepared, he would, with his grand-fatherly image and tone, indicate his disappointment with you, and then forget you existed for the rest of the class. It worked better than straight fear, because my generation is totally unfamiliar with people having strong expectations of our competance. Or at least, it worked for me, as I read for every one of his classes and read well. Didn't help my grades much until the last semester I had him, but at least I know the subject.

[Dan Fromm]

Karl didn't berate the unprepared. Given a student who couldn't answer a question, he asked a series of questions that would lead the student to the answer to the first one, if and only if the student answered all questions in the sequence correctly. Let one answer in the sequence be wrong, and sooner or later the victim would end up in painful self-contradiction. After which the torture would start all over and would continue until the Socratic method worked and the victim discovered that it indeed had the answer to the original question in it. The questions typically had to do with properties of contending models of the money supply process.

Those of us who understood what Karl expected had no problems. Our classmates who didn't catch on, though, suffered.

[Joshua Szulecki]

Dan,

That had to be beautiful to watch, but painful for taking notes.

[45PSS]

Lobalobo, others,
This site does not host images itself but does accept links to and from image hosting sites. To do this take a digital image and save it on your computer and adjust its size to fit the form screen (400x600) to keep the viewers form having to side scroll.
Next go the the site I linked earlier www.imagehosting.com (or simular image hosting site) whose home page opens with a simple box and a browse button beside it. Click the browse button, find the image you wish to post on your computer and select it then press the host it button. The image will upload to the hsoting site and a page with codes will open. The codes will have a copy button beside them. The clickable fourm code will put a thumbnail link where ever you paste it in the text and the fourm code will place the image where ever you paste the link. Sample image:
It's that easy, and the referenced site is FREE!
The sample image is 300 x 400 pixel 352kb jpeg with image demsions of 4.167 inches x 5.556 inches @ 72 pixels/inch.
_________________
The best camera ever made is the one that YOU enjoy using and produces the image quality that satifies YOU.

[Lobalobo]

Who knew there were so many lawyers on this site. Anyway, listening to you all, and how fond you are of your tough professors, I think I will rethink my disinclination to berate my students. If any complain, I'll send them to this site and blame you guys (not really).

Also, when I have time, maybe tonight, I'll use the method described to post pictures, and I'll show you all exactly what I mean. You can then tell me how I should have explained it (and this time feel free to be critical, now that we all know one another, so to speak).

[Dan Fromm]

[alecj]

The movie, mentioned above but not identified, was Paper Chase. I remember it vividly because it came out while I was in law school [fortunately no longer a "1L"]. A large group of students and a fairly large contingent of law professors all attended an afternoon showing.

We sat in front and the profs sat behind us. We had a ball naming the prof which best fit each actor in the movie. Of course, the prof that was chosen best fit for John Houseman took the most heat - fortunately, he was a good sport. In fact, I took every course that prof had and liked him the best, probably because I learned more from him than anyone else. He didn't have a good looking daughter, though.

The book that came out at this time was One L by Scott Turow. It was very accurate. For one caught in class unprepared, that period could be sheer hell. Everybody sweated it out because we all knew it could happen to us - the prof just had to call one more case than we had prepared for that day.

Back to photography. Us older coots can be brittle some times and it behooves any newcomer to wear a thick coat until he learns the language and terms. All we're trying to do is get to the issue as defined in terms we all know, use and understand. There's nothing wrong with that as long as you know what is going on.

[Lobalobo]

Those of you following my retaining ring saga asked for pictures, and so here are a couple of photos of the retaining ring (or perhaps flange) that I bought thinking I was buying a flat retaining ring. The rear cell of the lens should screw into the front part, which fits through the lens board but the depth of the ring (flange) prevents this. Advice welcome, though, I think I will simply go to the sites recommended and try to purchase a flat ring, perhaps by calling the vendor. (Also I've enjoyed all the comments about law school and will share them with my students.)