Speed ElektroGraphic
About Digital Photochemical Imaging

All the images on this site were originally created with a Speed Graphic "Anniversary" 4 by 5 inch press camera. The Speed Graphic was manufactured by Graflex, a Rochester, New York based camera producer. It was the dominant portable professional camera from the 1930's through the end of the 1950's. In fact, the style has become synonymous with the term "press camera."

This camera has many features, including both focal plane and leaf shutters, range finder and interchangeable lens. The film size of four by five inches results in an amazing amount of detail, even with faster "grainy" films. The film sheets are loaded into special film holders, which each hold two sheets. Focusing is done either with the built-in range finder or via the pop-up ground glass focusing screen. These initial images were shot on Kodak Plus-X black and white negative film.

Once exposed, the individual sheets of film are processed with Kodak D-76 developer mixed one-to-one with water, and fixed with Kodak Rapid Fixer. An intermediate stop bath rinse of diluted acetic acid is used between the developer and fixing steps to keep the fixer solution from being prematurely contaminated.

Once dried, the negatives are digitized with the Artec ScanROM 4E slide scanner as gray scale images at 400 dots per inch resolution. Once imaged, the files are converted to positives, and "tweaked" within JASC PaintShop Pro 5.0, and resized to their final web resolution of 800 by 600 pixels.

The Speed Graphic allows for many effects not possible with "normal" digital photography. Time exposures are probably the best example that I have tried, (such as the two surf images here). With this technique, space and time can be stretched and manipulated in such a way that common everyday scenes take on a new, other worldly quality. The area of open flash is another tool that is all but impossible with a standard digital camera. Like the time exposures, the shutter is left open, but instead of collecting the dim natural light of a scene, an electronic flash is utilized to "paint" the scene with a series of directed flashes.