About me

I am a cinematographer/cameraman/focus-puller gaffer. Over 40 years experience producing, directing, shooting, lighting and editing for film and video, using a wide variety of formats and equipment. Before working with moving images I was a still photographer. Then I moved into filmmaking, in 1968 and fished up in 2005. I now have a studio is on the outskirts of Greenwich Village in New York. The studio is a corner of the mid-19th-century warehouse-cum-stable ''I kept looking and looking, and I kept coming back to Charles Street. One particularly sunny day I walked up to the roof and the sun was moving across the water and I said: 'O.K., let's think about this place.' I have now been here going on three years and I love it here on the West Village along Manhattan's Hudson River waterfront. I always had this ambition too put my photos into a book but now with the internet I can show my photos on my blog and that what this blog all about.

Interests

sometimes, in good working order where quality

About my collections

I hope you will find something of interest in my classic camera collection. The collection comprises mainly of movie cameras that I have worked with over the years but also includes several from other cameras are a mix of 35 mm and medium format types both rigid and folding, and date from pre 1920 until the 60's. For each camera shown, I have attempted to give, as far as possible an accurate technical description, supported by various general view photographs of the cameras, together with photographs illustrating a particularly interesting feature or control. The technical descriptions are derived from my own notes based on personal use and experience with the cameras augmented by previously published material which is now out of print; in particular the very detailed series of "Cameras The Facts" by W D Emanuel and published by the Focal Press in the late 1950s.
Cameras are, of course, meant for taking pictures and a technical description is only one aspect of the instrument's properties. All of the cameras illustrated here are presently, or shortly will be, in use and most have their associated photo gallery where you can view photographs taken with the actual camera. I make no pretensions about expertise in photography. The photographs shown are of subjects of interest to me and are I hope, if nothing else, accurate statements of each camera's ability as an image recording instrument. Each camera image depicted was produced by scanning the original negative or positive using an Epson Perfection scanner at maximum optical resolution (no software enhancement) and then optimising colour balance and size etc. to make them suitable for web viewing.

My own interest in photography started when I was about 12 years old. I discovered my father's No 116 Box Brownie amongst some discarded household effects. At that time a had a passionate interest in steam locomotives and decided to try my hand at photographing the various arrivals at the local railway station. Encouraged by early success I extended my interest into general photography, and thus began a lifelong fascination with the gadgetry of photography. My first serious camera was a Voigtlander Vito IIa given to me as a fourteenth birthday present by my late father. I still have and use this camera and I suppose it is and will remain my favourite, but regrettably I no longer have the Box Brownie.