What happened to the guy selling bellows cheap on Ebay?

mark · Jun 29, 2005

What ever happened to the guy who sold bellows on Ebay and he had a camera kit too. I might be in need of an 8x10 bellows and wanted to drop him a line. His prices seemed way reasonable.

Mongo · Jun 29, 2005

If you're talking about Aletta, he apparently went belly-up. Rumor (and that's all it is to me as I have no personal proof...rumor) is that his bellows weren't light-tight. I read a number of posts last year from people who were waiting for replacement bellows when he disappeared. Literally disappeared, from all accounts. Putting two and two together (and remembering that both twos in this case are third-hand knowledge), I'd guess that his business couldn't survive having to replace a whole lot of bellows.

mikewhi · Jun 29, 2005

I guess that means he folded up his his tent......

mark · Jun 29, 2005

Aletta is what I was thinking about. Bummer.

MaLar · Jun 29, 2005

I bought a set of his bellows, and his book.
The bellows are made from paper with what looks to be masking tape on the outside, and painted black. His book is alright I guess never built the camera.
I heard (again this is rumor), that he was infringing on someone's copy rights.

LaMar

Calamity Jane · Jun 30, 2005

Yup, you got it. I was one of the folks who got stiffed with translucent bellows 'n' the one who got him banned from e-bay when he stopped answering e-mails and disappeared.

He seemed like a nice enough guy but, when he got a bad batch of bellows material, he decided to take the money and run rather than replace the bellows for folks.

Last seen headed for California. If anybody down there runs into him, let us know - some of us still want to collect our pound of flesh!

Ian · Jun 30, 2005

Hi Mark, dont know about cheep you normaly gets what you pay for.

Try these folks over hear in the UK, www.camerabellows.com

If i'm not mistaken they make the bellows for Keith's Canham cameras.

bobfowler · Jun 30, 2005

FWIW, I had Western Bellows make the replacement for my 5X7 Eastman #2. They did a great job and at a reasonable price.

Donald Qualls · Jul 1, 2005

Ian said:
you normaly gets what you pay for.

Actually, in my experience, that rule is best stated in the negative: You almost never get what you don't pay for (but it's fairly common not to receive what you did pay for in this wonderful world).

What happened to the guy selling bellows cheap on Ebay?

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