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These videos by Bruce Cahn make a good introduction to the field camera. He shows opening the camera, focusing, movements, and film insertion.

If you haven’t used a field camera or press camera before, please note that you might not have all the movements that he has on his Ebony field camera, but his Ebony camera will provide a good introduction no matter what your model.

Using a Wooden Field Camera Part 1

Using a Wooden Field Camera Part 2

Here are some other field cameras.

Here are Ebony field cameras like his.

I found this video of a 20×24 wood Polaroid camera made in 1978. This camera is just beautiful. So are its pictures.

Elsa Dorfman Polaroid 20×24 Camera

Here is a video of Elsa Dorfman using that camera and interacting with the group that she was photographing.

Elsa Dorfman

Here is a wikipedia article on Elsa Dorfman.

Here is Elsa Dorfman’s web site.

Here are some more Polaroid resources.

As someone who is always out checking out cameras and looking for cool old stuff especially on ebay or craigslist, I keep seeing people selling some nice Pentax film camera systems. Some of these people might have 3 or 4 lenses.

Often, I see someone say. “I’m selling this to go digital” or “This would be a great student camera”

Craziness, I say.

I know, I’ve been guilty of extolling the virtues of some new Nikon or Canon gear, but I can’t imagine people just dumping a perfectly good Pentax system to go digital. But then again, I like film and digital.

I wonder why people don’t take those lenses and use them on a new Pentax digital body if they want a digital body. Pentax has made some really nice glass. Why go spend all the money to switch systems?

Maybe some of them are going to digital point and shoot cameras. I don’t know.

The Pentax K-7 is a very capable camera. Check it out before you go dumping that nice old gear. You might like it.

K-7 Video Samples

K-7 Moving Picture Sample