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Commonly, even in summer, many more exposures are made with it at one fiftieth than at one one-hundredth, for this is not a brightly lit country in summer, and nearly all visitors and tourists find their negatives much under-timed. The Graflex, though unapproached in its own sphere, is not a good all-round camera, despite confident assertions to the contrary.
I got out my Graflex and caught several pictures of this flash-light of flame, but none that will be as vivid, as lurid, or as lasting as the flash-light that was etched into the film of my memory. The next flash-light of flame came bursting out of midnight darkness on the island of Java. We were bound for old Bromo, that giant volcano of Java.
We found, however, that a flat trajectory high-power rifle such as those with which we were armed was absolutely essential for many of our shots were at long range and we frequently killed gorals at three hundred yards or over. The camera equipment consisted of two 3A Kodaks, a Graphic 4 × 5 tripod camera, and Graflex 4 × 5 for rapid work.
Here is a picture of native football at the Allakaket, just north of the Arctic Circle, made late in April with a Graflex, fitted with a lens working at f. 4.5, at the full speed of its focal-plane shutter one one-thousandth of a second. In five years' use that was the only time when that speed was used, or any speed above one two-hundred-and-fiftieth.
Akeley made special preparations for taking fine photographs, and for this reason carried a complete outfit, even to a dark-room equipment for developing negatives and moving picture films in the field. He carried a naturalist's graflex, a small hand camera and a moving-picture machine. Mr. Stephenson had a 3A Kodak, I had the same and also a Verascope stereoscopic camera.
I have caught hundreds of sunsets with the Graflex; and other hundreds have I captured with a Corona, just as they occurred; and I have never seen a spot on earth where the sunsets were such glorious outbursts of crimson and golden beauty as across the circling shores of Manila Bay.
I sneezed and the little rascals sneezed also. I counted one, two, three, four, as I adjusted my Graflex for a picture and I heard a chorus of laughing "One, two, three, fours." I yelled ahead to an American member of the party and said "Wait!" and a dozen boys yelled "Wait!" We fell in love with the dirty-faced rascals.
Then the instrument is a great dust catcher and seems to have been constructed with a perverse ingenuity so as to make it as difficult as possible to clean. The writer uses his Graflex almost solely for native portraits and studies, for which purpose it is admirable, and has enabled him to secure negatives that he could not have obtained with any other hand camera.
Even in the summer, however, he always carries his 3A Folding Pocket Kodak as well, and uses it instead of the Graflex for landscapes and large groups. If he had to choose between the two instruments and confine himself to one, he would unhesitatingly choose the Folding Pocket Kodak. The difficulties of winter photography in Alaska do not end with the making of the exposure.
It is too bulky to carry at all in the winter, and its mechanism is apt to refuse duty in the cold. The 3A Graflex cannot be turned to make a perpendicular photograph, but must always be used with the greatest dimension horizontal. Except in brilliant sunshine it is difficult to get a sharp focus, and, even though the focus appear sharp on the ground glass, the negative may prove blurred.
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