Todd Foster
Member
I have and use several Graphmatics and their Fuji Quick Changer 45 equivalents. Fuji's are pretty much an exact and much newer copy. I found 3 of them at a New York City camera show and sale 20 years ago and have seen none since. Yes these all fit my Toyo field camera fine.
My Graphmatics are old and needed work. There was a felt light seal strip in there that shed little curved hairs onto the negs. I ripped open an old 2 sided std holder and took out it's seal strip which was like velvet cloth. That worked to replace the old felt strip. One of the little number wheels was loose from it's magnet base. Super glue fixed it.
If you have old Graphmatics I suggest a complete teardown, cleaning and repair before ruining film with light leaks. It's not hard. No manual is needed. Just don't lose any of the special screws.
Graphmatics were made for Speed Graphic cameras which had wide use in sports and action photog -- like car racing. With a Graphmatic in place you could use the wire sports finder to frame and bang off 6 shots in quick sucession. I've done that shooting fast changing clouds with Toyo on tripod when even a 2 or 3 second delay to flip a 2 sided holder is too slow to catch a moving scenario.
Otherwise these are fun to use but not essential. The negative numbering is sure helpful in identifying exact image in series. But I've notch coded all my std 2 side holders so negs are automatically numbered anyway.
My Graphmatics are old and needed work. There was a felt light seal strip in there that shed little curved hairs onto the negs. I ripped open an old 2 sided std holder and took out it's seal strip which was like velvet cloth. That worked to replace the old felt strip. One of the little number wheels was loose from it's magnet base. Super glue fixed it.
If you have old Graphmatics I suggest a complete teardown, cleaning and repair before ruining film with light leaks. It's not hard. No manual is needed. Just don't lose any of the special screws.
Graphmatics were made for Speed Graphic cameras which had wide use in sports and action photog -- like car racing. With a Graphmatic in place you could use the wire sports finder to frame and bang off 6 shots in quick sucession. I've done that shooting fast changing clouds with Toyo on tripod when even a 2 or 3 second delay to flip a 2 sided holder is too slow to catch a moving scenario.
Otherwise these are fun to use but not essential. The negative numbering is sure helpful in identifying exact image in series. But I've notch coded all my std 2 side holders so negs are automatically numbered anyway.