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Manual Focus Lenses Forum

Explore the world of vintage lenses through repair notes, real test shots, and detailed archive threads packed with images.

Explore the world of vintage lenses through repair notes, real test shots, and detailed archive threads packed with images.
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Jet Graphic
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Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:28 pm
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Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:28 pm
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Rigid lens mount with focusing film plane.
Co2 powered motor drive. Anyone ever see one of these?


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Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:48 pm
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Posted: Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:48 pm
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certainly is a strange beast


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:20 am
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:20 am
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Forget the CO2 motor drive accessory - OK, that parts hard to forget, but -

The "push button" feature plus other design details point to this being a derivative of the Graphic 35, so US-made.

What a camera ! This would make it one of the most modern cameras of the 1950's, and one of the most interesting cameras ever made in the US. The film-plane focus alone would make it special.

Any collector would jump on one of these.

I've never seen one or even heard of it. I wonder if these things were ever produced at all in fact. Its probably from around the time Graflex stopped making their consumer cameras and just started reselling Japanese models.


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:32 am
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:32 am
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This is out of a "Good photographers 35mm handbook" published in 1960.
If you guys like I'll scan the review and post it.
It's sorta quaint and at the same time... I would love to have one. Sans winder for me thanks Very Happy


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:57 am
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:57 am
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OK, it does indeed exist, and it seems is not all that rare -

http://www.foundvalue.com/photo/vintage-graflex-jet-graphic-35-camera-2050mm-nr-34150

Very interesting indeed, thank you. Now to look for one !


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:06 am
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:06 am
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Wow! Talk about a blast from the past.


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:01 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:01 pm
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luisalegria wrote:


The "push button" feature plus other design details point to this being a derivative of the Graphic 35, so US-made.


It was a bit of a mess - conceived in the US extending a previous electric-driven German (Iloca) design, contract built by Kowa in Japan. None of the contributors assumed responsibility for the resulting freak...


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:18 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 2:18 pm
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Here's its story:
http://graflex.org/GHQ/GHQ-13-1.pdf

You need to scroll all the way past some other fascinating stuff to page 7... the camera was made by Kowa, the CO2 bit by Graflex and the two didn't mate well, and additionally there were problems with the O rings... this caused stress between Kowa and Graflex; only two runs of the CO2 version were ever made.


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:38 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 5:38 pm
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Fascinating, really. Too bad they didn't gut it out and work through the development problems.

You know, this reminds me of another pneumatically-actuated camera I saw on eBay -- must have been a couple years ago or so. Very rare, the seller wanted an obscene amount of money for it. Don't recall the name, and I haven't had any luck finding info about it doing web searches. But what it did was use pneumatics to "automatically" stop down the lens aperture. Had tiny little hoses and the whole deal. Wish I could find a link to more info about it.


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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:50 pm
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Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:50 pm
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cooltouch wrote:

You know, this reminds me of another pneumatically-actuated camera I saw on eBay -- must have been a couple years ago or so. Very rare, the seller wanted an obscene amount of money for it. Don't recall the name, and I haven't had any luck finding info about it doing web searches. But what it did was use pneumatics to "automatically" stop down the lens aperture. Had tiny little hoses and the whole deal. Wish I could find a link to more info about it.


Most likely the Agfa Automatic 66, which was the automatic version of the Super Isolette and first portable AE camera. It is aperture priority though, regulating the time with pneumatics. It used a electromagnetic valve driven by the selenium cell to regulate the air flow (and hence timing) on a air-brake type shutter. Similar Compound shutters were made for over eighty years and are still popular among LF'ers for their reliability, so that was not that silly a idea as it might seem. Unfortunately they failed to put the valve into the shutter and lead the electricity to it, but added a intermediate system that connected the shutter and remote valve with tiny pneumatic hoses which were extremely vulnerable, or it might have been more of a success...
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