“Pennsylvania Avenue Subway” Tunnel (Former Reading Railroad), Philadelphia, 2004.

#photography

  • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    8 days ago

    The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. It was a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It used 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It’s sort of what you’d get if you somehow merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.

    • David in Tokyo@mastodon.mit.edu
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 days ago

      @[email protected]

      Do you have the negative at hand? What is it’s actual size in mm?

      FWIW, the '85 Hasselblad 500CM here is 53x53mm, the '53 Rolleiflex T is 54x54 mm, and the no longer here Mamiya 7II was a seriously glorious 54x70 mm.

      Although I’ve never used a GX680, I was photographed by one once (they were standard for wedding/family studio group photos here in Japan in the good old days).

    • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 days ago

      Fun fact: the Reading was a major northeastern US railroad (made famous internationally by its place on the Monopoly gameboard), which ceded its rail business in 1976 to the newly formed Conrail consortium. But the company kept most of its non-railroad real estate holdings, and today mostly operates cinemas (including NYC’s Angelika) in several countries

      • Matt Blaze@federate.socialOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        7 days ago

        (The Reading company was named after the Pennsylvania city, and so is pronounced to include the past tense of what you do with words on a page, not the present tense).

        • marqoz@federate.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 days ago

          @[email protected] Exactly the same as Reading, Berkshire, so I suppose it is just copied. The etymology of the original name is a tribe name, Readingas, meaning in Old Saxon “the people of the Red [one]”.