Ansco 10×8 Field Camera a Karsh Inspired Renovation in White

Ansco 10×8 Field Camera a Karsh Inspired Renovation in White….this has taken months of work and now looks wonderful coming complete with this lovely, recently serviced Kodak Commercial Ektar 10″ lens in an Acme No: 4 shutter.

It came to us looking very ugly, missing parts and in really a very sorry state.  It was dismantled, stripped of all paint, then meticulously refinished using proper oil based base coat and gloss…brand new blue bellows custom made by our guys complete the look.

A look inspired by the legendary Yousef Karsh, he photographed by another legend: Aurther Fellig….with his Ansco 10×8 shown here:

Our one isn’t perfect…you can’t lose fifty to seventy years of patina with a coat of paint, no matter how deep it is.

There were lots of parts missing and tracking down such things as replacements for missing knobs and adjusters was really hard…so some are lacking feel but still work and the camera can be locked solid and used quite happily.

The front panel has been made with rock hard laminate by a customer of ours, made to accept Sinar lens boards to make life easier in future…this will need to settle and wear in, since it’s so new front tilt is a little limited…the fitting up was done using new stainless steel screws in the main (also hard to source!) all the heads aligned for a good tidy high quality look.

Looks is not what it’s all about however.  This is a camera built to be used, the Kodak lens selected to maintain the Karsh look, somewhat wider but a lot more usable than his 14″ version.

We’d like to see it doing what he did….portraits, but it will be happy doing most general purpose and landscape photography….it’s all ready to go and get on with a new life!

See it being tested right here: