See Still Life

Answering your question, Do you like to work with the Graflex with a Smith doublet, visual quality lens? I really believe it would be difficult to find a more satisfactory outfit. It is a companion always ready and willing to do everything that either comes your way or you go after. Working at F 4.5, the lens gives you the opportunity of getting the broadest effects in landscapes or the softest in portraits. As a rule these are not pleasing to most people when enlarged. I therefore usually work with the lens at F 6 or F 8, which gives a delightful image with distinct contours and a definite softness to the outlines, making beautiful enlargements which are sharp enough for bromoil or gum. And the Graflex is not so very heavy when a film pack or cut films are used. The image is always right side up and you see it in the full size. No one can question the efficiency of the shutter, and with practice you can hold the camera for a one-fifth second exposure. The only drawback to the outfit is in seeing things from the waist level, which makes the foreground difficult. Thinking of your picture as a pattern, however, it is better to be looking down from an elevation and with a nine-inch lens on a 4×5 box the immediate foreground is negligible. Everything considered, I believe there is no more satisfactory outfit than this combination.

“Still Life” was the result of a problem of construction in pastel with three colors, the vase green, the small box red, with the white string. It was later photographed as a study of colored objects, using a Standard Orthonon plate with a Cramer Isos III filter and a Struss lens at F 8. The lens was of fifteen-inch focal length on a 6½×8½ plate. The exposure was made in an ordinarily lighted room, but not strong light, and I think about four minutes was given. The print is on ivory black platinum. There was no retouching of any kind, and I think the print shows the value of using a color filter with an orthochromatic plate where colors are contrasted in the subject.