How many 20x24 cameras

[Falkenberg]

Do anybody know aprox. how many 20x24 cameras are out there being used ?

[Pinholemaster]

Well if I had one, one more than there was yesterday.

Aren't these 20x24 cameras great!

Photography is a lot like horses.

"How do you make a small fortune in horses?"

"Start with a large fortune."

Grin.

Oh to have one more 'ultimate' format!

Finally the real question is "How many people are making photographs worth looking at with a 20x24 camera?

[Falkenberg]

Why would anyone have a 20x24 camera without using it ??? It is not a showoff piece of equipment.

[sanking]

Do anybody know aprox. how many 20x24 cameras are out there being used ?

The number is surely fairly small. Cameras this size are either home made or built on a custom basis. So far as I know they have been made in recent years by Lotus, Wisner, Chamonix, Ebony, and now Richhard Ritter and Keith Canham. I would guess that there are less than a hundred full function (excluding one shot pinhole cameras, etc.) 20X24 cameras in the world, probably a lot less than a hundred.

Second, I suspect that most if not all of them have been used or will be used. People tend to purchase this size camera for specific projects and/or for special subjects, not as a general purpose camera. The price of 20X24 pan film, when you can find it, is over $20 a sheet so the use of the camera has to be well planned.

I know of one 20X24 Wisner cameras that was purchased with several film holders, a 20X24 contact printing frame, and several boxes of 20X20 AZO, but was never used by the original owner because the project he planned for the camera lost its rationale. But the second owner has used it quite a bit, or so I understand.

Sandy King

[TracyStorer]

I have started building cameras as well (starting with 20x24), and am aware of 3 used Wisner 20x24 systems currently for sale.

[CRhymer]

Well, I use mine as a point and shoot. That is about 2 hours of pointing and one shot, or two. Compare that with 5,000 rounds of ranging and one of rapid fire.

Seriously, it might be of interest to make a list of owners/users. It would never be complete, but I suspect Sandy is correct, in that the number is small, more than 10 and fewer than 1,000.

For most projects, a smaller LF or ULF would probably work as well. Few projects require 20x24. There is, of course the thrill of the massive real estate on the gg. This is quickly attenuated by the cost of each shot.

Cheers,
Clarence

[Monophoto]

I read somewhere recently that Polaroid built one prototype and five working models of their 20x24 camera.

[Erik Hartmann]

I have a 20x24 B&J View Camera.....Going to use it this summer, when I got a linsboard.... or made one....
Do not know much about it, so if anybody know something, please tell me....

UPS.... You meant inch ???? and no cm.. ????

sorry Mine is CM.......

[TracyStorer]

I read somewhere recently that Polaroid built one prototype and five working models of their 20x24 camera.

Maybe my website? Two prototypes, but then, there we go again, there's more mis-info about the Polaroid 20x24s than correct info on the web.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I know someone who had three Lotus 20x24" cameras. He owns labs in various cities and was planning to rent them out in different locations, but for some reason it didn't work out, so he sold two of them and uses one mainly for personal projects and workshops, and sometimes other people use it.

He uses it mainly in the studio, but he told me that in the field he usually supports it with a portable Black and Decker workbench rather than a tripod or its studio cart.