96-Year-Old Photographer Writes a Wonderful Message to His Granddaughter and Gives Her His Gear

[Dear Alexis,]

On our trip this summer I mentioned to Kathy that I didn’t know what to do with my pieces of 35mm photographic equipment. She said that you might be interested in having them. I would love to give (send) them to you If you really would like to have them.

I don’t want you to feel any pressure to take them, but I would love to leave them to someone in the family rather than to just throw them away. I have laid them out on the bed and here is the inventory:

• Nikon camera body (about 1968)
• Original lens
• Zoom lens
• Flash equipment (In those days it was not “built in”)
• Carrying case
• Olympus camera body (I bought for Della, so she could also take pictures)
• Original lens
• Flash equipment
• A set of light filters (some date back to black and white film, e.g. accentuate clouds)
• Camera case

I had one larger telescopic lens, but I am unable to find it now.

My first camera was a gift from Eastman Kodak on their 50th anniversary, an extremely simple box camera that used size 120 film. I prize some of the b&w pictures taken with it.

Next I got an old, used, bellows camera that used size 116, or postcard size film, a fine camera in its day. One roll took 6 pictures, hard on my budget, so I took it apart, made and inserted a thin metal mask, painted black, drilled a hole in the camera back and inserted a red window so I could keep track of the movement of the film as I rolled it, and thus successfully modified it so it took 12 square pictures. It served me through college, although people made fun of my “Big Bertha” camera. I even sold a few pictures made with it, my first and only adventure into commercial photography.

As a graduate student I had access to the Department camera, but you would have laughed at the one I had to use at Kansas State in 1941-42. It was about a 1916 model, one with a shutter that was a slit in a fabric screen that moved by spring pressure across the back of the camera just in front of the film. It had up to 1/1000th of a second exposure by this mechanism. It was huge, about 3x4x8 inches. I published pictures taken with this camera. At Cornell I had a top quality 35mm Exacta at my disposal, my first 35mm, and my major professor told me to take it home and learn how to use it!!

When I arrived in Tokyo in 1945 I had no camera until I found a used, bellows-type, size 120 film, camera that took high quality pictures once I had repaired a light-leak in the bellows. Soon it quit working because it would not move the film. I disassembled it and found that the cogs on the cog wheel had “worn-out”, so I found a man who made me a new wheel from a more durable metal and after I put it back together it caused me no more trouble. My pictures from my year in Japan were all made with this one.

I finished my PhD in 1 1/2 years at Cornell and after about three years on a salary I finally bought me my first new camera, a 35mm Exa. It served me until I bought the Nikon. Now I am fully digital, with my third model.
That finishes a short version of my photographic life, and you didn’t ask for it! I know how you have worked your way up through modern, digital style photography, so I thought you might enjoy my trip.

Let me know if you are interested in these old cameras.

Love, Grandpa