The Busch Pressman Model D
Picked up from a local estate sale, I spent a good week or so fixing the pinhole bellows with Liquitex paint and cleaning the 135mm f4.7 Graflex Optar lens before testing this out. I spliced together a universal electric shaving razor cord to a PC flash port extender to be able to use a flash with the Graphex shutter’s ancient bi-post flash connectors.
Initial Thoughts
For a first step into large format I think the Pressman, even though this particular copy is super stripped down and ragged for its age, is a great camera for it. I think its going to take a lot of practice and cheap FPP film to really try and get used to all of the things it can do.
As for the format itself, this is a close zoom of my V600 2400dpi flatbed scan from the last image of the set, and the stitching is clearly visible on her dress. While I want to do darkroom prints with these (even just contact printing will look awesome with 4x5), splurging on a drum scan and high resolution print on better 4x5 photos I think will really bring out the full potential of the format.
