Christopher P. Stephens, Bookman

Chris Stephens has been a book dealer since 1965 - earlier if you count childhood buying and selling.

Stephens has sold major collections to university libraries all over the world. He has operated appealing bookstores in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, Hastings on Hudson, NY and several in NYC, NY. He is a wholesale dealer to other bookstores all over the world.

Chris loves books.

Stephens now maintains a lively internet operation out of his new home in Scranton, PA.


Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Large Format Camera


Look at what a very fine piece of engineering came in the door of riverrun. A large format camera! The back folds down and locks into place to extend the tracks for the bellows to fully open. The shutter is crafted with such masterly elegance that really, it’s no wonder after all that the human race has been able to construct machines that travel to the moon and beyond. Far beyond. In back of the shutter is a collapsible circle to vary the amount of light let in. The plane of the shutter, as well as the plane of the plate in back, can be tilted up to about 12 degrees.


Anyone would like to putter around with this camera. I love being able to. I not taking pictures with it though. Don’t know how. Yet. I might learn how to operate this camera some day, just like I might learn how to operate a camera at the other end of the time spectrum – the one that is allegedly built into my cell phone.

Photography is in riverrun’s neighborhood. The house where John William Draper and his son, Henry Draper, lived is in the next block of Washington Avenue, just up the hill. Henry Draper built an observatory and photographed the sky.




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George Eastman House - Technology Timeline

Field Cameras of the United States: 1879 - 1930

other Eastman cameras

Henry Draper first photographer of the moon

Draper the scientist

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