20th Century Camera Creations
by Dan Wagner
Somewhere, in a land far, far away known as Woodland Washington lives a man named Jeff Perry whose mission is to bring the benefits of modern technology to large format photographers the world over. Armed with a love of photography and a formidable product design background, he commands his army of 3D printers to manufacture angle finder mounts, modular film holders, processing reels, and ingenious press camera modifications and accessories. Through the magic of Zoom, The Cranky Camera was able to arrange a virtual face-to-face meeting with the man himself. Here’s what he had to say.
Jeff Perry of 20th Century Camera © Steve Abbott 2020
DW: Jeff, when I first discovered your company, 20th Century Camera on Instagram, I felt like the kid in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory who won the golden ticket. Seriously, your camera creations are amazing. How and when did you start your company?
JP: I’ve always been a photographer. I’m also a mechanical engineer and a product designer. I’ve designed all kinds of stuff for fairly large companies such as Xerox, Hewlett Packard, Honeywell Aerospace, and others. I kind of bounced around.
Anyway, the older I got the harder it was to shoot with view cameras. Due my aging eyes, getting out the loupe, focusing, and making adjustments became extra difficult. So I bought a Graflex Super D SLR camera, and just kind of fell in love with it. Then I realized I couldn’t focus that damn thing either!
So I started playing with the camera and seeing if I could make it better. At the time I was working for a company that was manufacturing a new type of 3D printer. Luckily, I was able to use some of my designs for test runs on the machines. I began building add-ons for my own camera. The more involved I got with it, the further down the proverbial rabbit hole I went. Before long, I began posting my results on Instagram, and wound up receiving a lot of notice for it. It kind of blossomed from there. I started the cameras first, then the film developing reels, and about a year ago I quit my job to do this full-time.
From the 20th Century Camera Website:
Our SuperReflex angle finders with top covers are built-to-order for the 4x5 Graflex RB Series B, Series D, and Super D model cameras. The finders are designed to replace the camera’s top lid and waist-level finder.
Comes assembled with a Fuji GX680 angle finder
Includes a top cover
Fast clip-on installation
Reuses your camera's original hardware
Corrects for reversed image viewing
Precisely focus even in low light conditions
Nondestructive and reversible modification
Works with 1916 and later Graflex RB SLR's
DW: When were the Graflex cameras manufactured?
JP: I think they started with the 1A model right after the turn of the 20th century, around 1905-06 or so. They built them up through the mid- 1950’s in several different incarnations. The Super D was the zenith of the large format SLRs manufactured by Graflex.
The Super D came out in 1947 with a caveat that they started the launch with a 3x4 Super D in 1941, and made three to four hundred units. Then WWII came along and precluded the manufacture of that particular camera. In 1947, commercial production was able to resume.
DW: How does the Folmer camera figure into all this?
JP: Folmer & Schwing, located in Rochester New York, was the original company. They were purchased by Kodak, and became one of their divisions. I think Graflex was spun off from Kodak sometime in the 1930s. They remained an independent company until the 1950s when General Machine bought them. Finally, they were sold to Singer in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, Singer was better at making sewing machines. The large format press camera had become a dinosaur by that time. I think Toyo wound up buying the tooling and designs from Singer, and shipped everything to Japan. You can actually find 4x5 six-sheet Grafmatic cassette film holders marked Fuji in green letters – that are from Toyo.
Grafmatic Film Holders
DW: Are you a fan of Grafmatic film holders?
JP: Yes! You can rapidly cycle through six sheets of film with them. They’re probably equivalent in speed to a bolt-action rifle. I have a small herd of Grafmatics. It’s pretty much all I shoot with. I’ll load up fifty or more sheets. It’s so much fun, that they can actually wind up being film wasters!
Laser Cutting Machine
DW: Your Instagram feed features a post showing a cool-looking 3D printing machine. It looks very impressive, and expensive. What can you create with this printer?
JP: That’s actually a five-thousand-dollar, 130-watt laser. Its cut area is about 53 x 36 inches, and can cut material such as plywood and acrylic up to a half-inch thick. You can cut cloth and leather with it, too. I make shutter curtains for the big Graflex SLR cameras with this laser cutter.
The nice part with the laser is that I can lay the material out on the bed, create a program, and the laser will cut the material precisely. I use a nylon material, and the cut fuses the edge of it, which is really nice. It ends up being super-strong, lightweight, and far better than the original materials.
DW: What were the original shutter curtain materials?
JP: Rubberized silk. Nice stuff, but you can get rubberized polyester now. You can also get a rip-stop Nylon with a rubberized back, too. If you laminate two layers together, it makes a really nice shutter. And it won’t rip or fray like the old ones do. That said, I do have a few cameras with shutter curtains that are over a hundred years old, and still in fantastic condition. A lot of it has to do with how the cameras were stored. It’s a hit-or-miss deal.
Anyway, the laser opens up many possibilities. I bought it in part to cut out the carcasses for my 5x7 camera project. I plan on using this laser to cut lens boards, panoramic masks, and other products. By combining laser cutting with 3D printing I can expand my process capabilities.
DW: How does gear manufactured with 3D printers compare to gear made by traditional methods? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
JP: Let’s talk about 3D printing. There are several different methods. There’s stereo lithography, which is a UV-cured resin in a big goo tank. A laser paints the outline of the part while it’s in the tank. That’s really the first incarnation of the 3D printers. I was using them in aerospace turbine engine manufacturing in the mid 90s.
Another 3D printing method is SLS (selective layer sintering), which is done with a bed of powder fused with secreted layers. The parts are generally made of nylon, and are fairly robust. Nylon is tough material.
And then there’s FDM (fused deposition modeling). That’s what most people are running in their homes. Think of it as a hot glue gun on a precision X-Y axis. So you have a roll of material that’s a given diameter. It goes through a heating mechanism, and is deposited in layers to create your part.
Now, to do the same thing, metal’s going to be the roughest and toughest. The problem is cost. A part that sells for twelve dollars would cost you sixty thousand dollars for the tooling. You could machine a few of parts for two hundred dollars each. 3D printing allows me to manufacture the part for considerably less.
The trade off with 3D printing is robustness. And 3D parts generally don’t perform well at high temperatures above 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit. The parts can soften, which is problematic, as you might well imagine.
But the upside of all this is that I can sit at my computer and design something, then throw it on a number of printers to spread out the build time. In a matter of hours I can iterate a design, mount it on a camera, test it, and ship it to a customer. If I get feedback on a part, I can incorporate the feedback into design modifications, and send the customer a replacement within a day. I manufacture a ton of custom lens boards this way. It’s a quick and easy process.
I think that in 15 or 20 years from now we’ll all have some kind of 3D printer in our homes. Rather than having stuff delivered by Amazon, you’ll get a 3D file. The file will go into your printer and manufacture the stuff in your house.
DW: That makes me think of the replicators in Star Trek. The camera handles you make look very solid. Are there hollowed out areas inside to help reduce weight?
JP: Yes, not only for weight, but also for ease-of-manufacture, reducing time, and strength as well. If you made a solid handle, it would take two days, and just be a tank. The way printers work, you can specify an infill percentage. This creates a skin with a honeycomb interior. This gives the part strength. You can adjust the density of the honeycomb, too. So with a cosmetic part, you could make the honeycomb 3/8” across. If it’s something that needs to be more bulletproof, it could be an eighth of an inch across.
My grips are around twenty percent fill, and made in several pieces. This also allows my grips to be modular. All I have to do to make a grip fit a different camera is to print a new base. It saves a lot of time and effort. People are pleasantly surprised by how robust and comfortable my grips are.
One of the things I strive to overcome is people thinking that the strength and finish of the FDM 3D printing parts are poor. Unfortunately, there are a lot people in their basements running machines and making parts that are just shitty. And that’s what a lot people see, so they equate that poor quality with all 3D printing.
DW: I imagine you must need a heavy-duty industrial printer.
JP: Actually, I’m able to accomplish much of what I need to do with a herd of Creality3D CR-10 printers from the CR-10 family. So many of my printers are larger than a typical CR-10. They’re often classified as advanced consumer model printers. A system from Stratasys can cost $50,000 and up.
DW: I guess the only way to get a commercial 3D printer is to snag one from a company that is going out of business.
JP: Yes, but the infrastructure and power requirements are huge. Plus these printers are big. It would be like parking a Volkswagen van inside your shop. But the nice thing is that there are a lot of local machine, laser, water jet, and sheet metal houses that can do piecework manufacturing for you. It’s one of the nice parts about living in the Portland metro area. We have a lot of these shops serving the local aerospace industries.
DW: Getting back to your origins. How and when did you become interested in photography?
JP: Well, back in seventh grade I got a Vivitar SLR camera. It was similar to a Pentax K1000 camera. Before that I had a little Yashica rangefinder. It was my first 35mm camera. I got that in fifth grade, and just fell in love with it. I had taken a summer school photography class where we built pinhole cameras from 126-film cartridges.
DW: I remember those. I made them, too.
JP: And we shot those and developed the film, and I was off to the races at that point. It was around 1975-76 or so. Later, in junior high I shot for the school yearbook. I wish I could find some of those photos. I did the same thing in high school. Due to a lack of free time, I kind of stopped shooting during my late twenties.
I kind of gave up photography until I was about forty, and happened upon a Mamiya M645 1000s camera – as a kid, I would drool over that camera! In the early 70s, that and the Hasselblad were the shit. When I found one with a bunch of lenses for about $500 at a local camera shop in Portland, I went, “Okay!” I bought it and started shooting 120-film.
From there it just snowballed! I went through every incarnation of the Mamiya M645 line. It wasn’t long before I found a 1951 Crown Graphic camera, and started fooling around with large-format cameras. This led to buying more cameras, and that’s how the insanity started.
DW: I bet you share my memory of going to sleep at night with hypo-hands – where your hands smell from photo fixer.
JP: Aw dude, they still smell like that! Well at least every now and then. That’s because I test out the film processing reels that I build. I shoot a lot of bullshit pictures just so I can develop them. I process every week.
DW: Yeah, those little lips on your reels that hold the edge of the film in place so they don’t come off during processing are really impressive. I think you’re one of the first people who really nailed that issue.
JP: So, I used to use the 12-sheet Yankee tanks for 4x5 film, and I hated them! You’d get air bubbles and you really couldn’t agitate. I even tried building a shaker table to address this issue, but they just sucked. I tried a variety of other methods, but they were all inadequate.
Eventually I decided to manufacture my own reels. The breakthrough came when I decided to just use the top and bottom spirals of the reel. By reconfiguring the geometry, keeping the basic pinwheel shape, adding a hook to hold the film and playing with it – I was soon off to the races. That was in April 2018. I just evolved it from there. I started with the 4x5, and now I have many more sizes.
DW: I see you supply Blue Moon Camera with some products. Do you work with other retailers?
JP: Yes, I work with Blue Moon Camera and other companies in Germany, Australia, and elsewhere. I build 4x5 cobranded reels that say FPP on one side for FPP (Film Photography Project). I’m slutty when it comes to that. If you want your name on something, just let me know.
DW: In terms of your creations, what’s your personal favorite?
JP: For niftiness, I’d say the modular plate holders. They have a snap-in, snap-out tray that can be a single sheet holder, which can be damn convenient now and then if you just want to shoot one sheet of film. You can load wet plate, dry plate, Instax wide, and they’re just cheap little inserts that go inside the tray.
The plate holders are a product similar to what I made in the industrialized world in terms of modularity. I don’t like to knock people off. I’ve been doing design work since I was in my early twenties. While people might say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I say eff-that – it pisses me off. Go be creative on your own, not off my back. So when I design something, I try to forge my own path. I really wanted to do something different.
I began by basing my design on the early 20th century wet plate holders that had a spring back, but with contemporary materials. I built one with a tray that was integral to the dark slide, or light trap. After talking with a friend who said, “Man, it would be nice to shoot Instax wide film in that,” I was motivated to try splitting the light trap from the tray. Now, you can shoot almost anything in it. The nice thing is that you can disassemble them quickly and rinse them out, which is fantastic for wet plate. Since they’re modular, you can easily purchase replacement parts for ones that are lost or damaged.
DW: Please tell me about the wood under the camera’s leather covering.
JP: It’s Honduran mahogany. In fact, you can’t import this wood into the states anymore. It’s akin to trying to import ivory.
DW: Wow, it’s almost a sin to cover these cameras. Why did they cover them? The wood is so pretty,
JP: That’s because the wood was cheap and easy to come by back then. The old Chris Craft powerboats, even the big cruisers, had hulls made from the same wood. Gibson guitars used Honduran mahogany as well.
DW: Do you get a kick out of seeing large format press cameras in movies and television shows?
JP: The prop-master for the recent HBO reboot of Perry Mason that took place in the 1930s did a stellar job. All the press cameras were period correct for the era. There weren’t any models from the early 40s or after used. It was pretty cool. My better half, Heather, looks at me and goes, “Jeff, you’re the only one who cares!”
DW: Tell her I do, too!
JP: Thank you, I will!
Errol Flynn “falling” out of helicopter with his Folmer Graflex SLR camera.
DW: Years ago I saw one of those 1940s Hollywood newsreels, Cruise of the Zaca (at the 3:30 mark), with Errol Flynn using a Folmer Graflex press camera to photograph a whale from a helicopter with pontoons off the coast of Monterey, California. Errol Flynn says, “There’s a little bit of Moby Dick in all of us, but my camera would have to take the place of a harpoon.” After a few shots he fell into the water with the camera. Then the helicopter landed on the water and Errol Flynn climbed back in and they took off. And all I’m thinking was, “Dude, you just ruined your camera!” But the funniest part was that he never opened the front cover to expose the lens. So the whole segment was bogus!
JP: That’s cool. Those cameras were bulletproof. It’s hard to break them.
DW: Well, I wouldn’t want to put them under water. Were the large format cameras the first products you started with? Did you recondition and make upgrades for them?
JP: Yeah. I started playing with faster and faster lenses, and really got into the Buhl Optical projector lenses. I began building mounts for the big Graflex SLRs. That was one of my first products – that and the Fuji GX680 angle finder mounts for them. These finders were a game-changer. They have diopters on them, and they correct for the left-to-right inversion – so it’s like looking through a modern SLR.
DW: It must be super bright to have such a big focusing screen.
JP: Man, it can be! I equate it sometimes to watching television.
DW: In terms of brightness and easy viewing, what you have must really be insane.
JP: Yes! Especially when you get into the 4x5 models, when the focusing screen is five inches square and the whole thing literally lights up. There’s no vignetting on it. I employ a micro-ground Fresnel that goes underneath the focusing screen. The light loss – if it’s over two percent I’d be shocked. If your camera has a first surfaced mirror (mirror with reflective surface in front of glass instead of behind) in it, and a good Fresnel, when you look through the viewfinder what you’re seeing is almost identical to ambient lighting. You lose nothing.
DW: Can you handhold one of these cameras? Would it be good for street photography?
JP: Absolutely!
DW: What the best way to hold these cameras?
JP: You would hold a 4x5 SLR camera from the bottom. This puts the focus in your right hand, and the shutter release in your left hand, under your left thumb. I’ve shot very few frames on a tripod with any of these cameras. I do a lot of stuff for photographer, Geoff Berliner from the Penumbra Foundation, and he never puts his cameras on a tripod. He shoots wet plates in a 4x5 Series D, and handholds it. I’m working on a 5x7 camera for him.
DW: What shutter speeds can you shoot handheld?
JP: One of the nice things about the big cameras is that you can handhold and get a crisp image at 1/30th of a second all day long. And if you’re good at holding still you can shoot at 1/15th. There’s so much mass to the camera that when the mirror comes up, it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t shake the camera, and there’s enough of a delay between the mirror coming up and triggering the shutter to drop to really negate any vibrations that you might have. These cameras are 8 to 9 pounds on average. And the 4x5s are about 13-14 pounds.
DW: Sounds like you would need to lift weights to get in shape for shooting with these cameras.
JP: They’re a workout. I shoot some street photography with them, and you’ve got about two hours before it stops being fun.
DW: Do you make any camera modifications to absorb shock?
JP: There’s no need to add any dampeners on the camera. However, my 3x4 cameras and others are highly modified in other ways. On the 3x4s, the only thing that’s completely original is the wooden body. The front standard is different, the whole top end of the camera is new, the back of the film back has been changed – new mirrors, new focusing screens, cable release adapters, hand grips – it’s a totally different camera than the stock version.
The cameras are gorgeous underneath the leather. But the reason the leather is on the camera is to provide a good grip surface, and to protect the wood from scratching and other damage. It’s just how things were made back then. Even the cast camera backs and film pack holders were covered in leather.
I make some esoteric accessories for people who wish to strip the leather and refinish the wood on their cameras. For example, I make one-millimeter spacers with bezels that go under the controls and fill in the gap created by the removal of the leather. It looks cool and is really functional.
DW: We call that camera porn on photography forums.
JP: Yeah, that’s totally camera porn! I get it.
DW: Thank you for making time for this interview. I look forward to seeing all the cool innovations you design and manufacture in the future.
JP: Absolutely, my pleasure, and I really appreciate the opportunity to chat about it.
I hope this article has inspired you. And don’t forget to check out the latest offerings and information on 20th Century Camera’s Instagram and Facebook.
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