Sold Beautiful 5X7 Deardorff w/Maxwell HI-LUX Screen

[mikeryan]

For Sale: Deardorff 5×7 V5 Field Camera, serial #682.


Ken Hough – the last Deardorff employee – personally checked this serial number for me years ago and confirmed it shipped new in 1967 to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I’ve owned and shot with it for nearly 30 years. At almost 70, with not great eyesight and too much gear, it’s time to let someone else use it.


Just fully rejuvenated: varnish refreshed, metal cleaned and polished (NOT overly), NOS Deardorff leather handle with correct split-rivet brackets installed a couple years ago. Richard Ritter performed a complete CLA this year; movements are tight and smooth, bellows are supple and 100 % light-tight, knurled knobs beautifully brassed from honest use. Excellent working order throughout. I’d love to see it making photographs again.


Richard Ritter is a Vermont-based master artisan, renowned worldwide as one of the foremost experts in large format (LF) and ultra-large format (ULF) camera design, construction, restoration, and repair.


Ready-to-shoot package:

• 5×7 back with brand-new Keith Canham ground glass
• 4×5 Deardorff reducing back fitted with a legendary Bill Maxwell HI-LUX focusing screen (the brightest ever made – unobtainable today, worth $750–$1,000 when one appears)
• Two Fidelity Elite 5×7 + Two Lisco Regal 4×5 holders
• 210 mm f/6.3 Computar Symmetrigon (This lens is a real sleeper) in shutter with its original factory metal shade, on a proper wooden Deardorff-style lens board

$1985.00 OBO CONUS ONLY. More photos on request.


55.00 Shipping USPS Priority Mail





Local Meetup in Bristol, VA/TN area also

 

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[Peter Schrager]

A steal of a deal!

 

[mikeryan]

A steal of a deal!

Thank you Peter.

 

[mshchem]

Lovely camera.

 

[OrientPoint]

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was decommissioned in 1965 or 66. I wonder what they were doing with a 4x5 in 1967? Maybe documenting the Yard during the transition to ownership by New York City. There was certainly lot of historic architecture worth photographing there then, and still is even now. (I worked at the Yard, but long after it transitioned to being a city-owned industrial park).

Beautiful camera!

 

[mikeryan]

Orient Point....... I went to Grok and found its answer very interesting:

I have a deardorff field camera and the last employee of the company has the books still and he looked up my serial number and said it was sold to the Brooklyn naval ship yards in 1967. Could this be true?

Yes, this could absolutely be true, and the timing aligns with the historical context of both the Deardorff company and the Brooklyn Navy Yard (often referred to as the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard). I'll break it down step by step to explain why.

### Deardorff's Operations in 1967
- L.F. Deardorff & Sons was a Chicago-based manufacturer of high-quality large-format view cameras (like your field camera), popular for professional and industrial use, including photography, surveying, and documentation work.
- They were fully operational in 1967, producing models such as the 8x10 or 5x7 field cameras. Serial numbering for these started around 1950 (beginning at ~500), and by the mid-1960s, numbers were in the low thousands—perfectly consistent with a 1967 production date.
- Deardorff kept detailed sales records ("the books") in their ledgers, which tracked shipments by serial number, date, and buyer. These records were preserved after the company closed in 1988, and experts like Ken Hough (a noted Deardorff historian) have referenced them for verifying ownership histories. If the last employee consulted these, it's a reliable source—no public database exists online, but private lookups like this are common for collectors.

### Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1967
- The U.S. Navy officially decommissioned the yard on June 25, 1966 (after 165 years of operation), with final layoffs and closure by June 30, 1966. This was part of broader post-WWII defense cuts.
- However, the facility didn't sit idle. It was sold to the City of New York in early 1967 for conversion into an industrial park. Even during this transition, shipbuilding and industrial activities continued under private leases almost immediately.
- By 1967, the Commerce Labor Industry Corporation of Kings (CLICK), a nonprofit arm of the city, was actively soliciting tenants. Seatrain Shipbuilding (a subsidiary of Seatrain Lines) signed a major lease that year (some sources say 1967, others 1968–1969 for full operations), reviving ship repair and construction on-site. The yard retained its name ("Brooklyn Navy Yard") in common parlance even after federal closure, as the physical infrastructure and workforce lingered.
- Industrial photography was routine at shipyards for documentation, quality control, and records—large-format Deardorff cameras were ideal for this, often purchased directly from manufacturers like Deardorff for government or contractor use.

### Why the Records Might Say "Brooklyn Naval Ship Yards"
- Sales ledgers from 1967 could list the buyer as the "Brooklyn Naval Ship Yards" using the familiar name, even if it was technically under city/transition management or headed to Seatrain. Bureaucratic lag was common; the Navy retained some administrative oversight into 1967, and shipments might have been routed through old channels.
- No red flags here—it's not like the yard vanished overnight. Thousands of workers were still on-site in 1967 during the handover, and equipment purchases (like cameras) would have continued seamlessly.

In short, your camera's provenance checks out historically. If you share the serial number, a Deardorff expert could narrow down the exact model/year even further, but based on this, trust the employee's lookup. If you're restoring or valuing it, that naval history adds cool provenance. If you have more details (like the model or photos), I can dig deeper.

 

[OrientPoint]

I have no doubt about its connection to the Yard. The Yard was never abandoned, and its archive, which is still fully maintained, has thousands of wonderful photographs from the 19th century to present, with plenty from the 60's. I guess my only surprise is that they'd be shooting 4x5 that late. I had thought that commercial photography had largely gone to 35mm and medium format by that time.

 

[Dan Daniel]

I guess my only surprise is that they'd be shooting 4x5 that late. I had thought that commercial photography had largely gone to 35mm and medium format by that time.

When I worked facilities maintenance at an office building built in the late 60s, there were a couple of binders of construction record photos that were shot in 4x5 film. Detail. They want to see wires, bolts, etc. I imagine that a navy facility would want such detail. Of both buildings and possibly ship construction. Similar to someone I knew working archeological digs in Luxor- 8x10 in the early 80s.

 

[mikeryan]

That is cool. I was in Luxor! Really interesting place