Friday, September 10, 2010

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Thursday, September 9, 2010

Ode to Shurrell

This is a photograph I took last week in a parking garage.  I used a late 1950's Ricoh 500 shooting Kodak T-Max 400.  This is a full manual range-finder camera with split sight focus and a bottom mount thumb action lever to advance the film.  Ricoh saw fit to put in a fixed 45mm lens at f2.8.  It has screw-on attachments to convert for wide and tele shots.
This camera was originally purchased in Korea during the war by a US VET.  He lived behind us during my high school years and gave the camera (and accessories) to me because I was interested in photography.  I used the camera for many of my class projects over the years in high school and college.  This camera has been well taken care of for 50 some years... and still shoots a crisp clean shot.  I've given this camera to my daughter now as she starts her photography classes in high school.  I'm sure that in '57 this camera didn't expect such a long life.
Thank You Shurrell.


here is a shot of the vintage range-finder.