Hello to my friends on APUG. I spend entirely too much time here. You know what? No place I would rather be.
I live in Edmonds, WA, USA. That is up and left on the map near Seattle. Yes, I LOVE the rain and overcast skies, keeps the contrast under control.
I am a machinist by trade. I spent four years in a traditional apprenticeship and have worked as a Machinist, Toolmaker, Quality Control Inspector, Planner, CNC Programmer, Process Engineer and Technical Writer. In other words, I find it hard to hold a job.
Now, about photography, When I was a mere pratt I heard that it was possible to get a good grade for very little effort by taking a photography class in High School (Why do they call it that?). I think Secondary School is much more appropriate. So, I started this class with the idea of skating through to a C without doing anything at all. To my suprise and amazement, I loved the class. This stuff was interesting and imagine that, it was a for credit school subject. Incredible!. I was the photo teachers aid for the rest of my sentence. I was a Sophomore and had a Black Nikon F with an FTN finder, F-36 motor drive and a 43-86 Nikkor Zoom (piece of crap) that cost me $2000 bucks on credit but had no car. Yes, even at that tender age I had my priorities straight.
Having paid my debt to society by doing a four year stretch for the board of education, I signed up for even more humiliation and degredation in the US Air Force where they promised me a job as a photographer. Three days before we graduated from boot camp they called four of us into a small room and told us that Richard Nixon had just signed a bill that froze certain military jobs. Photographer was of course one of those jobs. Military photography was to be taken over by civilians. Depression!!!! Zoloft had not yet been invented so I went ahead and took the only other option they offered. That is how I became an airplane mechanic with an attitude.
Four years later when I was paroled from the dungeons of the USAF, I decided to make a living doing photography. I had my trusty 4x5 Speed Graphic, the Nikon F2, a couple of Nikkormat's and a wonderful Weston Master V meter. What else did a guy need?
Three years I starved as I tried to eek out a living in the fiercly competitive world of freelance photography. I sucked at it probably due to lack of maturity more than anything.
A pawnbroker offered me three days work teaching him how to buy photo gear. 6 years later I was still trying to teach him. When something tasty came in, the owner sold it to me for cost. How about a mint Nikon SP for $50? Or a Schneider Symmar Convertible 150-265mm f5.6 for $10. You get the point. I also got a lot of cameras that were broken and started to "fix" them. I did not repair them, I "fixed" them. It was not until years later that I started to actually repair cameras.
In the late 80's I built and sold a total of eight 8x10 field cameras in my copius free time. I had a band saw and a disk sander. It was awful work and they were awful cameras. I wish I could find one now. They probably all fell apart. I shudder to think about them now that I have a clue.
I pretty much dropped photography when I got married and had a herd of children except for one short stint with an 8x10 Deardorff surreptitiously purchased out from under a used camera dealer. I overheard (it was a small camera shop, honest I was not eavesdropping) the fellow ask the dealer (who had screwed me on numerous occasions) for $400 for this old non-front swing Deardorff. I left the shop and hid around the corner. When he came out I performed the old cliche "Hey buddy, wanna sell that Deardorff cheap?". He did and I bought it. I was so poor in those days that I never was able to afford film for the thing. It went away one month when the landlord got serious about the back rent.
I pretty much gave up photography for many years after that. I was heartbroken over the Dorff and I still am.
Fast forward a couple of decades. My supervisor at work asks my advice about what digital camera he should buy. I told him an Olympus D500 for about $30 on Ebay based on his stated needs. A week later he came in with a brand new Canon 20D. OMG! It was awesome. I started feeling the old shutterbug climbing onto my back again. So I started looking for a new digital to replace my aging Sony DSC-S85 (which is a very fine camera by the way). I looked and looked and drooled and slobbered over all the photography magazines. Something was just missing though, as I taught myself the rudiments of Photoshop in anticipation of buying a new digital SLR. It just wasn't the same as sticking your hands into the developer, feeling the slick surface of the paper as the image comes into view. The stench of indicator stop bath was missing. There were no developer stains on my fingers. It just didn't feel right. Then in an issue of Shutterbug (no longer Shutterbug Ads it seems), I saw an ad from a company I remebered from the olden days. It was an ad from 47th Street Photo in New York City. I remembered buying a couple of Nikkors and a non metered prism for the F from them. There at the bottom right of the ad where they put the junk nobody wants was a list of large format equipment. I saw prices that were half what I used to pay for LF equipment. Hmmm! wouldja look at that.
I spent two solid days with little sleep looking at each and every interesting thing on ebay and the rest of the web. I was hooked again. After much consideration, I decided that for the best quality images, film and photo paper were still the place to be. So I bought a cheap Cambo with a very fine lens and then found a Beseler enlarger with no shipping charges (just had to drive 500 miles one way to get it). Within a month, I was fully equipped except for a densitometer. That came the following week.
I think I read about APUG on Photo.net. I came here and found exactly what I wanted. A bunch of great people in my area who wanted to build 8x10 cameras. Oh boy, I am in Hog Heaven! Now that I have been in manufacturing for 15 years and have a complete wood and metalworking shop, this is going to be fun instead of torture like the last time I built cameras.
Now we come to today, about a month and a half after I found APUG. My girlfriend Deborah and I are building 8x10 cameras with the Seattle Camera Makers. I have decided to do what I love by going into business making field cameras. I plan to publish extremely high quality and detailed plans and construction guide for an 8x10 field camera in October 2005. Hopefully I will have kits available by the middle of 2006. Then we will be looking to expand into other formats and other camera designs.
Thank you APUG, for giving photography back to me. I love it so.
Barry Young
I live in Edmonds, WA, USA. That is up and left on the map near Seattle. Yes, I LOVE the rain and overcast skies, keeps the contrast under control.
I am a machinist by trade. I spent four years in a traditional apprenticeship and have worked as a Machinist, Toolmaker, Quality Control Inspector, Planner, CNC Programmer, Process Engineer and Technical Writer. In other words, I find it hard to hold a job.
Now, about photography, When I was a mere pratt I heard that it was possible to get a good grade for very little effort by taking a photography class in High School (Why do they call it that?). I think Secondary School is much more appropriate. So, I started this class with the idea of skating through to a C without doing anything at all. To my suprise and amazement, I loved the class. This stuff was interesting and imagine that, it was a for credit school subject. Incredible!. I was the photo teachers aid for the rest of my sentence. I was a Sophomore and had a Black Nikon F with an FTN finder, F-36 motor drive and a 43-86 Nikkor Zoom (piece of crap) that cost me $2000 bucks on credit but had no car. Yes, even at that tender age I had my priorities straight.
Having paid my debt to society by doing a four year stretch for the board of education, I signed up for even more humiliation and degredation in the US Air Force where they promised me a job as a photographer. Three days before we graduated from boot camp they called four of us into a small room and told us that Richard Nixon had just signed a bill that froze certain military jobs. Photographer was of course one of those jobs. Military photography was to be taken over by civilians. Depression!!!! Zoloft had not yet been invented so I went ahead and took the only other option they offered. That is how I became an airplane mechanic with an attitude.
Four years later when I was paroled from the dungeons of the USAF, I decided to make a living doing photography. I had my trusty 4x5 Speed Graphic, the Nikon F2, a couple of Nikkormat's and a wonderful Weston Master V meter. What else did a guy need?
Three years I starved as I tried to eek out a living in the fiercly competitive world of freelance photography. I sucked at it probably due to lack of maturity more than anything.
A pawnbroker offered me three days work teaching him how to buy photo gear. 6 years later I was still trying to teach him. When something tasty came in, the owner sold it to me for cost. How about a mint Nikon SP for $50? Or a Schneider Symmar Convertible 150-265mm f5.6 for $10. You get the point. I also got a lot of cameras that were broken and started to "fix" them. I did not repair them, I "fixed" them. It was not until years later that I started to actually repair cameras.
In the late 80's I built and sold a total of eight 8x10 field cameras in my copius free time. I had a band saw and a disk sander. It was awful work and they were awful cameras. I wish I could find one now. They probably all fell apart. I shudder to think about them now that I have a clue.
I pretty much dropped photography when I got married and had a herd of children except for one short stint with an 8x10 Deardorff surreptitiously purchased out from under a used camera dealer. I overheard (it was a small camera shop, honest I was not eavesdropping) the fellow ask the dealer (who had screwed me on numerous occasions) for $400 for this old non-front swing Deardorff. I left the shop and hid around the corner. When he came out I performed the old cliche "Hey buddy, wanna sell that Deardorff cheap?". He did and I bought it. I was so poor in those days that I never was able to afford film for the thing. It went away one month when the landlord got serious about the back rent.
I pretty much gave up photography for many years after that. I was heartbroken over the Dorff and I still am.
Fast forward a couple of decades. My supervisor at work asks my advice about what digital camera he should buy. I told him an Olympus D500 for about $30 on Ebay based on his stated needs. A week later he came in with a brand new Canon 20D. OMG! It was awesome. I started feeling the old shutterbug climbing onto my back again. So I started looking for a new digital to replace my aging Sony DSC-S85 (which is a very fine camera by the way). I looked and looked and drooled and slobbered over all the photography magazines. Something was just missing though, as I taught myself the rudiments of Photoshop in anticipation of buying a new digital SLR. It just wasn't the same as sticking your hands into the developer, feeling the slick surface of the paper as the image comes into view. The stench of indicator stop bath was missing. There were no developer stains on my fingers. It just didn't feel right. Then in an issue of Shutterbug (no longer Shutterbug Ads it seems), I saw an ad from a company I remebered from the olden days. It was an ad from 47th Street Photo in New York City. I remembered buying a couple of Nikkors and a non metered prism for the F from them. There at the bottom right of the ad where they put the junk nobody wants was a list of large format equipment. I saw prices that were half what I used to pay for LF equipment. Hmmm! wouldja look at that.
I spent two solid days with little sleep looking at each and every interesting thing on ebay and the rest of the web. I was hooked again. After much consideration, I decided that for the best quality images, film and photo paper were still the place to be. So I bought a cheap Cambo with a very fine lens and then found a Beseler enlarger with no shipping charges (just had to drive 500 miles one way to get it). Within a month, I was fully equipped except for a densitometer. That came the following week.
I think I read about APUG on Photo.net. I came here and found exactly what I wanted. A bunch of great people in my area who wanted to build 8x10 cameras. Oh boy, I am in Hog Heaven! Now that I have been in manufacturing for 15 years and have a complete wood and metalworking shop, this is going to be fun instead of torture like the last time I built cameras.
Now we come to today, about a month and a half after I found APUG. My girlfriend Deborah and I are building 8x10 cameras with the Seattle Camera Makers. I have decided to do what I love by going into business making field cameras. I plan to publish extremely high quality and detailed plans and construction guide for an 8x10 field camera in October 2005. Hopefully I will have kits available by the middle of 2006. Then we will be looking to expand into other formats and other camera designs.
Thank you APUG, for giving photography back to me. I love it so.
Barry Young
Welcome Barry!