Does anybody else miss Spiratone?

spira · Mar 12, 2009

Spiratone size

ChrisPlatt said:
The Queens store was tiny. It was located on Northern Boulevard in Flushing,
one mile east of Shea Stadium (R.I.P.) and one block west of Main Street.

Chris

The Queens store was small, but the building, which contained Spiratone's main offices, was fairly big. And the nearby warehouse was also big. The Manhattan operation was quite small by comparison. The store may have been bigger, but the whole thing was 1/20th the size of what was in Flushing.

When I have some time, I'll scan some old Spiratone catalogs and ads and post them at spiratone.net (nothing is there now, but I do own the domain)

Greg Spira
gspiraatgmail

mikebarger · Jun 8, 2009

Thanks Greg

It will be neat to see the old ads and help jog my memory.

Mike

NYNews · Jun 19, 2009

Good Ole Spiratone

I bought my first camera in 1967 (35mm Mamiya/Sekor mailordered from Chicago to Louisiana) and proceeded to teach myself photography. Spiratone was this magic place in far away New York City that seemed to have everything I could ever possibly need and was affordable. I eventually moved to NYC and one of the great things was being able to go to both the mid-town store and the flushing store. I purchased a lot of stuff there -- lenses, flashes, umbrellas, flash and light meters -- more than I can recall. I still have most of this stuff in the basement though the old Mamiya eventually died and was replaced with a Nikon -- and most recently Canon equipment. That old 400mm 6.3 lens was amazing (for the money) boy what I could capture with it. Not really much of a lens by today's standards, but I took some of my best potraits with that lens -- believe it or not! Spiratone really was a gods send for us beginning photographers who had NO MONEY. I do miss that "wish book".

milos88 · Jun 22, 2009

When I have some time, I'll scan some old Spiratone catalogs and ads and post them at spiratone.net (nothing is there now, but I do own the domain)

Greg Spira
gspiraatgmail[/QUOTE]

Dear Mr. Spira,

I found your post on Spiratone Catalogs you said you'd scan and post on spiratone.net website. Will you ever get some time to do so? I am sure
many APUG and other phot forum members would be delighted to download them, in memory of the late Mr. Spira and a great photo store he run
in New York.
I visited it once only, on my first visit to the US, in 1988. I read about it in Popular Photography for years before (I am from Europe) and was delighted to see it in person. It was more impressive than B+H at that time....
Thank you in advance!

Milo

emmjee · Sep 6, 2009

If when perusing the old catalogs you see any information re:100mm Portragon filter size, I would appreciate it. Great little lens, obviously threaded for some size filter. I have the box and packaging material but no instructions (not sure if it came with any). Thanks!

Mark

jmoche · Nov 28, 2009

I was cleaning out a closet and came across some boxes that used to be in my darkroom. I found several boxes of Spiratone Psychobrome paper. That stuff was awesome! It was basically day-glo paper coated with an emulsion. You could make your own psychedelic posters (a definite age giveaway). Now, if only I could find that 400mm tele...

Jack L. Casner · Oct 16, 2011

I miss Spiratone all the time. Where else can I go for unusual gadgets?

I still own a light metal rifle stock mount tor camera and telephoto lens. It was cheap and it still works.

ic-racer · Oct 16, 2011

No, I don't miss them. The 400mm lens I got as a teenager was a very poor performer. The 'galvometer free' light meter I got was big and clumsy and used incandescent lamps, requiring frequent battery changes. The photo bag I got had an odd zipper on the side, making it difficult to get things in-and-out of the bag. It only had a single compartment inside, so everything clanked together. The LENTAR 135 mm lens I got was an extremely poor performer. The 28mm lens I got was had a unique soft-focus effect when wide open. I wound up trading all this stuff, with the bag, to pay for the taxes on a Rolleiflex when I was in graduate school.

Terrence Brennan · Oct 19, 2011

Spiratone stuff

I used to order products from them in the early 1970's. As one example, I was living in Montreal, and it was actually cheaper to order cardboard slide mounts from them, pay for shipping and Duties and Taxes, than it was to buy them from a store in Montreal.

When I was sorting through my old slides I came across several trays-full (Sawyers straight style; how many people remember those?), in which the slides were mounted in Spiratone slide mounts. The slides were on Agfachrome 50S Professional film, which I processed myself.

I still have the bulk film tongue cutter I bought from them in 1974. I recently discovered it when I started to bulk load again, in with my old Watson bulk loader and the rest of my bulk loading stuff. I also have a fixed-ratio 35mm slide duplicator, which attaches to any SLR via a T-mount adaptor.

Ah, the memories...

Jeff Kubach · Oct 19, 2011

Some of Spiratone was good.

Jeff

agfarapid · Oct 19, 2011

David Brown said:
"Spiratone" is one of my routine searches on ebay. I rarely actually buy anything, but it is fun to see what turns up.

Anybody besides me still have their 400mm "sharpshooter"?

I actually bought one of their 500mm mirror lenses years ago which I replaced with a 600mm Sigma. I still have (and use) my darkroom equipment (Saunders LPL 67 with Dichroic, trays, etc.) purchased from them in the '80s. I still remember all those shops I'd frequent whose advertising kept the photo magazines afloat back then: 47th Street Photo, Cambridge Camera, Olden Camera, Minifilm...

Ralph Javins · Oct 19, 2011

Good morning;

Yes, Spiratone and Fred Spira are also among the nice memories in my photographic history. I was able to purchase a few things from them when I was back in Washington, D. C. in the 1960s. And, like many others, I was also curious about the right angle mirror adapter that could thread onto a telephoto lens. I finally found a couple of them in a camera shop just two years ago. Yes, I bought them, more for nostalgia than anything else.

Learning just a couple of years ago that Fred Spira had died was a serious reminder that also I have developed an excessive accumulation of years. Still, I do miss having MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY and POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY (I subscribed to US CAMERA for only one year) arrive in the mail and sitting down and looking through all of the fine print and illustrations in the Spiratone ads in the back.

Regarding the 6.3/400mm pre-set telephoto T-mount like lens that Spiratone had, I think they can also be found with both LENTAR and VEMAR labels on them. One of each are here now, although I did need to clean and reassemble the diaphragm in the LENTAR. I know that the LENTAR and VEMAR were made by the same people. I do not know if they were Komura.

agfarapid · Oct 19, 2011

eli griggs said:
I never bought or used anything from Spiratone but looking at some of their offerings was fun and the prices always seemed right. I think they had a nice little light meter I liked the look of but I bought something else, Vivitar I think.

Last year, included in a bunch of free darkroom gear I received were several Spiratone items; filters and miscellaneous stuff I can't quite figure out. One of these is a B&W paper processor that I've got stored on the carport; very basic with a two chemical set-up. I won't use it for photography but the rollers look good enough to salvage for making woodcut brayers out of and the motor might see some use in a future project. I guess the only reason I haven't pulled it apart yet is that nostalgia for the name-brand has stayed my hand.

Wow, that was the old Spiratone Stabilization Processor. I actually used it when my college newspaper purchased one to use when we had to meet deadlines. The smell was awful and the prints always curled and faded. Fast forward 45 years or so to today's modern ink jet technology!

JerryWo · Oct 19, 2011

I'm with ic-racer. Spiratone's stuff was junk. I eventually (and rather quickly) replaced EVERYTHING I had in my first Spiratone darkroom.
I could not believe the difference when I bought a "real" enlarging lens, an El-Nikkor. That's when I learned that stopping down a bad enlarging lens made it BETTER - it did NOT, in fact, make it a GOOD lens....it's still junk.

Jerry W
Warrenton

semi-ambivalent · Oct 19, 2011

Terrence Brennan said:
...via a T-mount adaptor.

Ah, the memories...

Ahh! The nightmares. (Maybe they were from the Petri)

s-a

Oren Grad · Oct 20, 2011

Still have my Colorflow filters - groovy!

And lots of other Spiratone goodies I inherited from my dad - Bellowscope and 150mm Macrotel short-mount lens, lots of filters in odd sizes (that's where I stocked up on Series V filters for my dad's Kodak Signet 35!) and adapters and stuff, Vario-Dupliscope, Vignetar. I can probably find other pieces if I dig deep enough in my junk boxes. We stayed away from the SLR lenses and the darkroom gear, but the other knick-knacks were handy and serviceable enough.

prplnite1 · Sep 11, 2012

In Modern Photography

Hi. Yes, I miss getting my copy of Modern Photography and looking at the advertisements. Spiratone had great things to buy, especially for a beginner in 35 mm photography. I still have 2 of the cameras I bought from them. One was a Hanimex Practica Nova 1b; I also bought a 135 mm hanimar telephoto with a Pentax screw mount. That camera and lens weighed a ton and if I didn't snap the picture, I started getting the shakes!@ But, it was a great camera to learn on and it took pretty good snapshots. I also bought a Zenit B. This was a Russian 35 mm camera body that I used for astro pictures of the moon. I was kinda of clunky, but it worked!
I guess the Internet has killed catalogs, magazine and ordering through the mail. I was the waiting for your order to come and then tearing the box open to see your new camera! Sigh

benjiboy · Sep 11, 2012

Unfortunately I'm old enough to remember Spiratone's ads in American Photo magazines, but being in the U.K I never bought anything from them.

John E Earley · Sep 15, 2012

Apparently, the value of Spiratone lenses has gone up with time:
[h=1]@Rare@ Spiratone Telephoto YS 135mm f/1.8 fit Nikon F[/h]
Buy it Now US $871.20

http://www.ebay.com/itm/380469542692?ru=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fsch%2Fi.html%3F_sacat%3D0%26_nkw%3D380469542692%26_rdc%3D1

spira · Sep 15, 2012

It was nice to see this thread - which my younger brother Greg (under the same user name) posted in a few years ago. Sadly, Dead Link Removeda few months ago.

Greg and I established a Facebook page for Spiratone a few years ago - and I have a bunch of scanned ads and catalogues that someone was kind enough to send us. Go to http://www.facebook.com/Spiratone and click on "like" if you wish!

We own spiratone.net so we will eventually (excuse me I will eventually) try to put the information up there, as I did promise Greg I would complete the task.

I'm happy to address any questions about Spiratone items as well, or at least try to. And I'll be using this user name so hope to hear from you.

Jonathan Spira

Frank C · Sep 17, 2012

Funny, my brother and I were talking about Spiratone just the other day and how much we missed it. There are so many names that are gone now, I'm glad to hear that you are keeping the Spiratone memory alive.

wiltw · Sep 17, 2012

As a young teen interested in photography, it was a a great source of fun to look thru the Spiratone ad each month to see what goodies one might have lust for the unobtainable.

spira · Sep 18, 2012

Frank C said:
I'm glad to hear that you are keeping the Spiratone memory alive.

Thanks. I am trying to the extent possible

Yashinoff · Sep 18, 2012

I think a website cataloguing Spiratone's products and history would be invaluable for collectors and users alike. I hope to see it up someday.

Andrew Kleinfeld · Apr 13, 2014

spiratone

Yashinoff said:
I think a website cataloguing Spiratone's products and history would be invaluable for collectors and users alike. I hope to see it up someday.

I sure miss them. A website would be great.

Fortunately, I still use Spiratone equipment I bought for my first darkroom setup in 1958 or 1959, so they are not forgotten for me. My timer for print fixing, some trays, etc.

Does anybody else miss Spiratone?

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