Last Man Standing

I mentioned (and pictured) a Wista field view camera yesterday. You might be interested to know that Keiichiro Nagaoka, builder of a similar but competing 4x5, is the last craftsman still building wooden cameras by hand in Japan. He was 82 years old as of the end of 2019 and has to make his own metal parts now (no more subcontractors willing to do it), but he's still building new 4x5's and 8x10's, just as he has since he started way back in 1962.

Here's the link to a September 2020 article about him originally published in Saray magazine: https://serai.jp/hobby/1002833.

Most people probably already know how to do the following, but those who don't will appreciate this: To auto-translate a whole web page, open Google Translate. In the right-hand pane, choose the language you wish to translate into. Enter the URL (web address) in the left-hand pane, then hit the "go" button in the right-hand pane (the rounded square with the arrow in it to the right of the URL). The auto-translation will open in a new window.

Keiichiro Nagaoka, from the Saray magazine article

Compliments of the participants in a thread at the LF forum (largeformatphotography.info) started by mhayashi, here's a look at what Nagaoka-san's workshop in Ueno, Tokyo, looks like from the street; here's a PDF of a Nagaoka brochure, and here's a video about him in Japanese. These give us a portrait of a happy craftsman who has spent his life doing what he likes.

One of the participants in that thread is Joe Kashi, who is also a TOP reader. Maybe Joe, if he is reading this, could send me a portrait of his Nagaoka, and tell us the story of it?

My old friend Oren, curator and custodian of the Stately Oren Manor View Camera Museum and Graveyard*, always preferred Nagaokas because they are lighter than competing 4x5 field cameras.

Heavy, man
Apropos of weight, the Wista-of-sainted-memory came in at least three woods—cherry, Japanese rosewood, and ebony. The cherry one is the lightest; and the rarest kind, the ebony, is the heaviest by a good margin. My own preference far and away is the rosewood one.

You will virtually never see a Wista with pristine bellows

Should you be interested in a Wista, the rarest of the rare happens to be up for auction right this moment: one on which the bellows are not crinkled from someone forcing it to close who doesn't know how to close it! Virtually all Wistas for sale have such crinkles in the bellows. It's cosmetic damage only—crinkled ones still function—but if you buy this pristine one, for heaven's sake learn to close the camera properly—do not force it—it's counter-intuitive but not hard to learn if you just work it out—and keep these "survivor" bellows in good shape!

Chances of that happening: close to zero, unless someone reading this really does buy that. It's rare that I can predict the future, but here's what's going to happen to that camera: the buyer will have trouble folding his new camera and ham-handedly try to force it to close, and those perfect bellows will become crinkled, just like all the rest. For such is life.

TOP is off tomorrow. See you on Sunday! I am still not caught up on the comments from last Sunday, but I will work on them till I am. Hope you have a nice weekend.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren and the folks on the LF board)

*That is, he, shall we say, owns, um, more old wooden view cameras than might be strictly required for purposes.

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Neil Partridge: "I'm never likely to use, own or even hold a bellows camera, but I'm intrigued: what's the right way to close one? Is it just case of doing it slowly? Is there a sequence to follow, perhaps with things being loosened off? Sorry I don't even know how one works!"

Mike replies: They all close differently. Or rather, there are different ways to close different cameras, and you just have to learn how yours works. It's like anything else. Buy a new car, you have to groove new habits for operating the controls thoughtlessly. The Wista folds in a way that's a bit counter-intuitive, and you need to learn how to do it and then develop a routine to do it properly. It's not rocket science—you could figure it out in five minutes with no instruction. But when you try the way that seems like it's obvious and it doesn't want to work, the thing to do is not to simply apply more pressure to force it. When I sold mine, there were no crinkles in the bellows.

Matt: "After working with a folding 4x5 for a few years, I scraped together enough cash to buy an ebony 45s...a non-folding work of art that also happens to be a wonderful camera to work with. It is quick to set up, a joy to use, and very easy to lock down solid. Being able to set it up without the extra steps of a folding camera has meant fewer photos missed. It has its downsides...more limited movements than some cameras, and shorter bellows than others, but it is one of the few cameras I’ve owned that makes me happy just pulling it out of the bag. I hope the same will be true for whoever buys that Wista!"

Lee: "The cherry Wista 45 DX I bought in 1982 has bellows that are in great shape, and not crinkled. I used it to shoot a portfolio to get freelance studio assisting jobs, and I shot with it around Europe for a year.

"A French electrician and photo hobbyist got curious about the camera in Fiesole when I was shooting Etruscan ruins. We gave him a ride back to his hotel in Florence, and he hosted my wife and I in his Paris apartment a month or two later. He gave us a ride around Paris in his 2CV the evening we arrived, pointing out the various places around town where sex workers were picked up by their clientele. He was working on his Ph.D. in psychology, and that was his area of study. You never know where an interesting camera will take you."

Kodachromeguy: "Mike, even most metal folders (Wista, Toyo Field, Rittreck) have wrinkled bellows. The Rittrecks seem especially prone. Maybe folding a field camera does take a rocket scientist."

Malcolm Myers: "I have a Nagaoka 4x5. Sadly, it doesn't get the use it should. One day I'll get back to it."

Mike replies: As I said, mostly I cannot predict the future, but....  :-(

Michael J. Perini: "Lovely story about Mr. Nagaoka, I love it. For me, the quintessential wooden view camera has always been the Deardorff. It does everything you need and no more. Wista and Nagaoka made wonderful cameras but the best out of Japan were those from Ebony, especially their truly innovative wide-angle 4x5's which could be had with stainless steel or titanium hardware."

Fred Tuman: "A Nagaoka saved my commercial career. We were starting a very high-end residential wall coverings shoot in Coconut Grove, Florida. The prep time alone for this project cost thousands and it was all on my head. My usual large format kit consisted of six large cases with two Linhof 4x5's, 8000 watt seconds of lighting, tripods, light stands, etc.; weighing in at about 150 lbs. All of this goes on the airplane with my assistant and I. As a backup I also take with me, as a carry-on in a backpack, the Nagaoka and three small lenses, plus six film holders. My assistant carries a light tripod, three small light stands, and three Vivitar 283 flashes with built-in slaves.

"As you are about to guess...all the checked-in luggage goes to a destination unknown. The client (with his wife and two kids) are anxiously waiting with three stylists to get this production going. The Nagaoka performed brilliantly. For three days we shot all the vignettes with this modest combo. Thankfully, after the third day,the children were getting restless, and the client took them to Disneyland and had the confidence enough to leave me be. The rest of my equipment miraculously showed up and we could get our business done."

Mike replies: Fred's story is another example of the pro's dictum: always have a backup!

Comments

[Gordon Haddow]

I often think about my old Wisner 4X5 which I loved to photograph with but at time found very frustrating - just as I was ready the light would change or the wind would come etc. Eventually sold it for a Pentax 67.

A funny story about the Wisner - I had to send it for repair after setting it on fire!. I was out at Eureka dunes in Death Valley using a 450mm Nikkor (which covered about 11X14)for the first time . The sun was quite low at the time and I was photographing towards it. Look under the cloth as I focused, I noticed a cloud drifting passing on the ground glass - funny I thought there were no clouds at the time. De-focus, it disappeared. Focus and it reappear. That's when I smelt the smoke. When focused infinity the sun was focused off the edge of the ground glass and has started to burn the wood. In my haste to stop this I tilted the camera forward and the weight of the lens twisted the front of the camera. Cost $600 to fix - fortunately the insurance paid.

i wonder if anybody else has done that?

[Dave Richardson]

The camera you linked to is a Buy It Now, not an auction.

[Paul McEvoy]

It still remains highly annoying to me that the two kinds of cameras I love using the most (TLRs and Large Format) have no real digital analogs. I suppose you could rig a TLR with a digital back if you had the money (yes my dream camera is a Mamiya C330 with a MF back) but the large format experience seems more or less undoable.

[Len Metcalf]

Wow. Isn’t that just fantastic.

I always loved my Ebony the most out of any camera I have ever owned.

How about a write up of Philip’s.

It is the one camera I wished I had bought when I had the opportunity to order a 8 x 10 explorer from him directly. I flew to NY to buy my large format camera. The guy at B&H talked me out of 8 x 10. Anyway I still have only shot a handful in tat format.

Philips were my dream camera. Just a thought.

So love your writing Mike. Tried to reply to your other post but lost the words on my phone and got distracted and didn’t write new ones.

You are better than the others that have gone by a long way. I learn from you. And from the community here.

So glad I can support you in a small way.

[Robert Fogt]

I owned (and used!) a 4x5 Nagaoka for some years back in the seventies. It was purchased at Helix Photo in Chicago. My first lens was a 90mm Wide Field Ektar, purchased at Darkroom Aids on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. And my second lens was a 150mm Caltar from Calumet Photographic in Bensenville, IL. Nagaoka does, indeed, appear to be the last man standing!

[Martin D]

The Canham DLC45 is an intriguing foldable metal field camera made by KB Canham. Highly collapsible and super lightweight, meant for backbacking landscape photographers. Very elegant too, with an austere Bauhaus-style design.

Folding up the Canham requires a very specifuc series of simple steps that everyone gets wrong, everyone that is except Mr Canham. Result: crinkles in the bellows, in a very specific staircase pattern top down from the top of the front standard. Every copy I have seen has them, my own copy which I bought used had those crinkles when I bought it. Functionally the crinkles don't damage the bellows (which is made from some rubber-based material).

To me these crinkles are part of the look of this particular camera.

[Edward Taylor]

We need to bring back scanning backs for view cameras. That way, at least you could still use view cameras for reproduction, landscapes, architecture and still life - without having to resort to film. And the files were huge, like 750 MP. Does anyone still make them?

[Ken Rowin]

I have a 4x5 Toko view camera, which is a knockoff of a Wista, that I bought ages ago from Lens and Repro in NYC. The salesman showed me the sequence to close the camera — usually frictionless. If there is ever a bit of resistance I know that I am doing something wrong and restart the whole process (generally it’s because I left the focus rail extended.). I started using it again with the Covid emergency, documenting one of the last apple orchards in my area. There is nothing like a large format transparency.

[Mark Sampson]

I bought a Tachihara 4x5 (very similar to the Nagaoka) in 1982 and used it for ten years; it was my first 4x5. The featherweight Japanese cameras have a very subtle, beautiful hand-made 'feel' that is just exquisite.
I sold the Tachi to buy a 4x5 Zone VI, which I still use regularly. That's a fine hand-made camera; strong, beautiful and versatile. And while I have great respect for the people who built it, the Tachi (like the Nagaokas I've seen) have a jewel-like quality seen only in the Japanese cameras.
I'm glad that Nagaoka-san is still alive and making cameras, and wish that I could justify buying a new one from him. Thanks for telling the story here, Mike!

[John Ironside]

I'm intrigued that no-one has mentioned the Gandolfi Brothers. I've never seen one of their cameras, AFAIK, but there was a lovely short bit of archive BBC footage about them and their camera-making workshop. The firm lasted from 1885 to 2017, although Arthur, the last of the brothers died in 1993.

[Robert Hudyma]

Another last man standing is Miyazaki Sadayasu (宮崎貞安) a one-man lens designer and manufacturer in Japan.

His claim to fame are tiny pancake M-mount wide angle lenses. His lenses are hand assembled one-at-a-time and are mostly sold in Japan. You can buy his lenses from Japan Camera Hunter and Map camera in Japan.

[Bill Tyler]

Not precisely bellows - but when I first bought a used Crown Graphic it took quite a bit of fiddling to figure out how to open it. Turns out that the bump in the leather at top front that looks like a bubble or other defect is actually the thing you press to pop open the front.

[Earl Dunbar]

I sold my Toyo 45A several years ago (it was super solid and I really liked it) for the much lighter and more capable Chamonix 45N-2. The Chamonix is not quite as easy to use, but is around half the weight of the Toyo. As I aged the Toyo combined with a Zone VI "Small" tripod was just too much; the Zone VI was sold as well.

I should think the Chamonix would qualify as "hand made" though I'm pretty sure it's not by a single craftsman. It's a lovely piece of kit.

[KeithB]

You must have seen Carroll's parody of Hiawatha about photography:
http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/carroll/hia.html

The description of the camera:

From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;
But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid.