 Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace Wow, I can't believe that I'm finally making this video. It's true I have many a tale from my travels and work here on YouTube But for this one I've reached deep into my back pocket and by back pocket I mean my ass and pulled out one that might be solid today I'm gonna be sharing a cautionary tale about I guess buying old film cameras and one of the many episodes on this channel That were never made this all starts about like two or three years ago back when I had hair I guess a big part of my job here on the tube is you know research for videos like researching Locations film stocks and probably most commonly cameras turns out when you've been doing that for about six years You've seen just about all of them. So one day nipple deep and scholarly research I stumbled upon a camera that I'd never seen nor heard of before Graphics ke4 it's a military camera from the 1950s I think and I don't know not many of them were made much less still exist any of the eBay listings You'll see nowadays for it are just kind of for the parts which makes me think that the cameras were blown up or something I mean, I guess that happens in war the ke4 is a rangefinder and it's kind of akin to those You know big Fuji 690 cameras except the ke4 is a lot bigger and heavier it shoots 70 millimeter film cassettes And probably the coolest feature was that if you cranked this lever several times Which we'll call the hog you get like three or four shots off before you got it You know crank it again. It was a self-advancing mechanical system I'm not gonna pretend like I know how it works probably tension or something like that not the sexual kind just Like mechanical tension. There isn't too much info online about you know first-hand Experiences with this camera. It did seem like they weren't commonly found used in military applications So I'm not really too sure how much field time these cameras actually saw really cool piece of history though And a cool looking camera, right? That's also what I thought a couple of years ago I thought it'd be a cool project to work on you know bringing this camera into the modern era by Adapting it to use 120 film it seemed doable at the time But I wouldn't really know until I got my hands on the accursed beast itself if for nothing else I guess it would be an interesting video and at one point I did think it would be cool to you know start a photography project Kind of centered around this camera obviously none of that happened. So let's get into it one day I found a listing for a functional graphics ke4 with a couple of lenses for a bit of a pretty penny But you know honestly, I was willing to spend it at the time because I had pretty big plans for this thing And at the time I was working two jobs the effects and running my mouth here on YouTube And I guess I just needed to gear acquisition syndrome light myself into thinking I was working on something transformative Anyway, a week later the package arrived Oh my god Thanks huge But I love it If I remember correctly, I think there are three lenses in total for this kit the listing that I found only had two of those lenses The standard lens was a Kodak ektar 102.5 millimeter 2.8, which is like the nifty 50 for the system I guess there's also a longer lens that's heaviest balls and just about as phallic the third lens I don't know. I guess I didn't really actually believe it existed It was just kind of a funny prank by the manufacturers that went on far too long. It's a 63.5 millimeter or something like that It's the wide-angle lens for the system I definitely scoured the internet far and wide looking for this thing, but found almost nothing I did once see a listing for it about one or two years ago with an actual physical photo of it But let's not jump ahead the camera itself was a super cool large and in charge for sure It'd be impossible to do you know covert street photography with this thing But whatever after cranking the hog I tested the shutter speeds all the way to one of 500th and they seemed fairly accurate It was quite a satisfying shutter actuation if I remember So from here I got to work designing a system that could adapt 120 film it would take some sweat tears and piss for sure I hope you brought a change of clothes Because your eyes are about to piss tears You nasty this camera natively shoots 70 millimeter film Which is kind of close to the size of 120 film just with sprocket holes and the film actually came in these big ass cartridges Kind of like 35 millimeter film obviously this format is not around anymore, but it definitely had some advantages I began doing some autopsies on 70 millimeter cartridges like a captured alien at area 51 It won't talk and inside these cartridges are spools that are you know kind of similar to 120 spools So I started by retrofitting actual 120 spools inside the top and bottom cartridge plates so that they would you know Effectively fit into the camera through brute force basically jamming stuff in places is literally day one at any repair technicians class Right I found out later You can actually still I think order 70 millimeter film from Ilford through their special formats program though I don't know who the hell is still shooting 70 millimeter so Ilford might have done away with that anyway There's a bit at the top of the take-up end here that automatically rotates your film to the next frame So I need to design an adapter that could fit into the bit grooves as well as into the 120 spool groove pocket So I called in a specialist From the other room my partner Monica does 3d stuff like this professionally We need to be a pretty thin adapter because there wasn't a ton of room at the top of the take-up chamber So after some measurements and more or less just guessing we sent off some adapters and variations for 3d printing two weeks later And the parts came in they didn't quite fit so we did more adjustments two weeks later And those also didn't fit so we did more tweaking the 3d kind not the meth kind and two more weeks later We finally had something Semi-workable workable and just about the loosest sense possible because of the Arrangement of everything the 120 film was slightly shifted downward from the gate But the image would still cover most of the frame and likely render something akin to like a Six by nine image is a bunch of other shit that went into this that we don't really need to get into I had to figure out where the film started based on every actuation and some other little stuff But for all intents and purposes it was working time to test it in the field where it worked, but mostly didn't Turns out the pressure plate was putting too much pressure onto the film for it to to advance And I basically got like three workable photos before a ton of multiple exposures But I don't know you gotta start somewhere I guess For my next test I just simply remove the pressure plate from the back hoping the tension from the take-up spring would hold the film flat But before I could do that while testing the camera system tragedy struck the camera made this like weird-ass Clanking noise and the shutter curtain did this Needless to say I nearly shit my pants and terror. I don't have footage of that I'm no camera repair man, but I know that that's pretty bad. I couldn't fire the shutter anymore I couldn't advance and perhaps most horrifically couldn't crank the hog I knew I was kind of a Upshits river without a plunger because how in the key for crap was I gonna find somebody to fix this old and Historical camera I could try myself I suppose so I ordered a repair manual online Which is just about the most obscure and niche thing I've ever found on eBay and after flipping through the booklet and getting a headache at how complicated and Dense this machine is I said something like not play it that ain't for me Especially because I didn't really even know what the issue was internally anyway Truthfully, it didn't really seem like the problem arose because of what I was doing with the adapters It was kind of sad though I mean I was 95% of the way through figuring this thing out until it jammed up so from there I went to the graphics forum and posted a desperate cry for help looking for a repair technician Someone who was brave enough to take on this challenge at the very least I did have a repair manual and it was pretty quiet for a while until one user got in contact with me Let's give this person a cool military designation like Typhoon, okay So typhoon was a semi-retired camera repair technician and had done years and years of work on other graph likes cameras Most notably on the focal plane shutters for those four by five cameras He said he'd never worked on much less seen this camera before but he'd give it a shot all out of options and the Disabled shell of a camera sitting next to me the shell of a man who once had big aspirations and dreams I said ah What the hell typhoon is literally my only option at the moment Okay, so I just sent off the Graphlex to a Graphlex camera repair technician It feels kind of weird to be sending off a camera for repair before I've actually had a chance to use it But I guess that was kind of the risk. I knew I was gonna be taken I mean this guy seems to know what he's doing though He the copies that I made of the manual for him He seemed to figure out that the shutter is very very similar to the shutter on a national graph Which is a six by seven SLR camera that shot 120 film sucks But It'll be fine All right, this happens sometimes with cameras So from there typhoon started disassembling the camera and kind of just digging around trying to see what might have went wrong But updates on progress were few and far between Typhoon is an older gentleman and he was very very upfront about the fact that he was having some health issues here and there Eventually though, he did find the root of the problem inside the camera a metal ringed piece inside this shutter that had completely Crumbled maybe just because it was an old part or there's a ton of wear on it over the years It does seem like Possibly a common issue with these cameras There's a lot of people that try and sell this specific part on eBay for some reason all the time and it's almost always broken So typhoon actually from there reached out to the awesome team over at SK Grimes And they began work replicating a new part to replace this old part very cool that in today's day and age That's even possible and yeah, this all took place over the course of several months But I was getting kind of excited, you know new parts means new life for this camera Right here while you're on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what happens next I'd like to take a brief pause and thank today's sponsor Squarespace. 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Your health is a priority This project is on no time constraint and that I knew some shady underground players They could get him some new organs if he was interested from there contact with with typhoon was few and far between There was a one point where I didn't hear from him for like six months But that was kind of the norm most people don't like talking to me So I kind of get it He did eventually get the part into the camera and began reassembling it and even got the hog cranking again But ultimately he was having some issues getting the shutter timing to be accurate if I remember correctly that and he would need to delay the work again due to worsening health conditions at this point It was 2023 and I'm kind of half given up on the project as a whole It had been about two years since I first received the camera in the mail I kind of just moved on to other Significant projects that took up more time another six months went by and I hadn't heard from typhoon So I emailed him again and never got a response which like I said before wasn't exactly uncommon But something seemed unusual several weeks later I decided to check in again and still nothing knowing that his health had been in decline and pretty bad in the recent months I More or less just figured the worst that typhoon took the camera and moved to some random off-grid hole in the wall in Mexico Living off the land and sea after every long day of wrestling in 2,000 pound marlins off the coast at a secret location Not only to him and a fortunate few other sailors He would return to his beachfront hut Aco margarita and see the graph looks sitting there on a shelf He would take a brief trip down memory lane remembering his former life and pondering if it's worth picking it back up again for one last ride Which is all a nice way of saying I think basically typhoon died for months I searched local obituaries looking for typhoons real name, but never found anything So there's always this like Fraction of a chance that typhoon was still kicking ass out there You know deep-sea fishing in Mexico or whatever some months later while perusing the graph likes form again I found somebody who was more or less in the same boat as me You know they'd sent typhoon a camera to repair and we're kind of stuck in limbo anyway This forum poster did officially confirm that yes typhoon had passed away It was kind of sad to me that this man was gone You know a guy that had tons of Technical repair knowledge from years and years of working on the cameras that we love to use my correspondence with him was always Pretty nice. He was definitely a quirky guy, but he's pretty funny. I did always enjoy, you know getting emails from him I ended up originally reaching out to the original poster who confirmed typhoons passing and I asked if they ever, you know Got their camera back to which they said no, but it was a work in progress He tried contacting the county about typhoons estate, but You know how it can be go to the dmv sometime if you don't anyway He tried this that and the other and his camera was I guess nowhere to be found So I figured that would just about be my fate as well because at least the last time I heard from the typhoon the camera was still in quite a state of disassembly and For all I know all those parts can be in different boxes in different places But if you do work for the san josei california local government and want to help a random internet guy out DM me on myspace or just email me. So That's where basically the story ends. Is there a silver lining? I guess this video it's a good cautionary tale to anyone out there thinking of gambling on an old rare camera Super risky and the knowledge on how to repair them is disappearing pretty quickly as the generation of repair texts with experiences Starting to thin out harder than my hairline if anything if you know a repair tech give them a high five or a hug Or a firm slap on the ass whatever you and they are comfortable with tell them good job I appreciate what you do because it's hard work and the community needs them quite a bit Anyway, overall it was a hard lesson to learn and I only got like three photos out of the thing But I think i'm better off for it now. I still do have the lenses. I don't know what to do with them Oddly enough, it seems like the 102.5 millimeter ektar might just actually barely cover four by five So if anyone out there wants to help me try and adapt it to a lens board and I guess a shutter then Hit me up unless anyone else has any suggestions on what to do with it the 205 millimeter I'll probably sell on the black market as a missile