Adding tilt to a Speed Graphic

I am now going to discuss my recent modification to my Anniversary Speed Graphic. For those of you that don’t know a Speed Graphic is a camera that was made from the early 1900’s up until I believe the mid 1970’s. Anyway these cameras were the standard for press photographers for many years and they are the cameras you would normally see a Hollywood photographer taking photos of actors and actresses in the 40’s. They are the cameras that had the large flashbulbs hanging off the side. They came in different sizes but the one that I have is a 4×5 camera. It is the anniversary model so it was made during WW2 up until right after.

Anyway the reason I decided to modify my Speed Graphic is mainly due to cost. I am not the richest man (I have a family of 4 to support) so I cannot afford the most high tech field camera that has all kinds of movements. You can get a working speed graphic off Ebay for around a hundred bucks. An actual field camera start around 300 and up. So I settled on a Speed Graphic because of its cost and it is a good way to enter the world of large format.

Well now that I have one I wanted to add tilt to it, mainly because I enjoy making small DOF images. In order to do this you need to be able to manipulate the front lens forward and back. I will display a photo so you know what I mean. It wasn’t hard at all and with about 2 hours of work I now have a camera that has tilt. I would suggest anyone else in my position that enjoys LF photography but can’t afford a nice field camera to do the same if you want to start messing around with adjusting the tilt of a camera.

Here is how I did it;

First I took the front standard support off of the camera. You can do this by unscrewing the two side nuts that hold the lens to the frame. Then you need to remove the wire viewfinder. This comes off by prying it apart a bit and just working it off the bolts that come out. Once that is off you need to pry at the top of the uprights on the frame that holds the lens so you can maneuver the lens bolts away from the frame. Once you have just the front standard loose attached only to the bellows collapse the bellows and let it sit inside the camera. Then you need to push the standard frame all the way into the camera like you are going to close it. Once it is in there then drop the bed down. After you do this you will be able to pull the frame out and it will be off the camera like in the picture below.

As you can see we have just the front standard frame all by itself. Once you have it you will notice there is a kind of track that the front standard fits in. All you have to do now is cut the channel off with a dremel. I used a cut off wheel to cut most of the metal off and then sanded it down nice and smooth for the finished product. Be careful here as you want to only remove the bent part of the metal and you don’t want to start grinding into the main part of the uprights. You will also need to cut off a bit of the bent metal that is bent over on the angled piece at the bottom of the frame. This way the lens will tilt when the lens is not raised. Here is a photo of what that looks like.

In the above picture you can see how I used a grinder to cut off the strip of metal that is bent to form the track. Once this is gone it will allow the front standard to move back and forth. Once you have all 4 sides cut off as well as the angled bent piece you just need to sand the piece of metal so there are no burrs. Once complete with this just put the frame back onto your camera and start to experiment.

And here is the finished product.

As you can see it works well and it gives me the right amount of tilt needed to get the kinds of DOF that I want. All it cost me was a couple of cut off wheels for my dremel.

If you have any questions please let me know. I didn’t get too in depth because I didn’t want to insult anyone’s intelligence. But if you do not understand something I have put out here let me know and I will help you out.