In your bag No: 1471, Edwin H Voorhees III
Not often you see someone lugging around a Graflex Super Graphic, but Edwin does just that. And this is his ‘walking’ camera. Wow.

I am a photographer, designer and printmaker living in the suburbs just north of Philadelphia, PA.  The kit you see featured has very recently been simplified in shedding my still beloved Texas Leica, a Fujica GL 690 with the 100mm lens, as I got more comfortable with using the Graflex Super Graphic with the 135mm Optar as my “walking around” camera.  

I really like the choice of using the cammed rangefinder, framing in the sport finder, or composing directly on the ground glass.  

I was very fortunate to find the Super pictured above, which is my second Super, and the result of taking a chance buying from a know-nothing estate seller (yes, for a song).  My first had the 127mm Optar with its smaller image circle and an optical finder, but worked perfectly down to the electric body shutter release.  When I received this camera from estate guy, I was pleasantly surprised to find spotless bellows and camera never fitted with an optical finder, and in all ways precisely the configuration I would have ordered from the factory!  Full disclosure, I did have to repair the rangefinder linkage on both cameras in order to make them work, but that ended up being quite simple.

The leather bag is at least 20 years old… an M. Julian laptop bag from Wilson’s leather.  To say this bag is tough would be an understatement, and it still looks great.  

Some LF life hacks; I store my Super in an Igloo soft-sided, insulated lunchbox stuffed in the bottom of the main compartment.  Likewise, the holders are kept in an insulated cinch-top bag intended to keep 64 oz growlers cool.  Finally, a homade whatever-powered loupe; I cut the front element off a flea market finder scope from a Meade telescope, trimmed to focus on the frosted side of the ground glass accounting for the rubber padding I added on the ground glass side. I’m pretty sure a pair of sunglasses came in the Duluth Trading company optical microfiber bag it’s sitting on, at least 15 years ago.  Microfiber never goes out of style.

The rest of the bag is the usual stuff you might find in an LF shooter’s bag.  Film holders (2x Portra 400, 1 ea Portra 160, FP+, HP5+), a Pentax 1 degree spotmeter, dark cloth, survival kit in a tin because you never know, and a note pad because, you know, I’m supposed to at least look like I’m making notes for each exposure…

Believe it or not, plenty of room left in the bag for purchases, lunch, core samples, windbreakers, that Fuji X100f proto that’s arriving any day now…   

There’s even the padded laptop pocket, into which my iPad (oops!  Not pictured!) completely disappears.  I have no idea whether Wilson Leather still makes this bag, but I feel this one should probably go in the stealth camera bag hall of fame.  It has travelled with me from London to St. Lucia, Bermuda and multiple trips to the American West, both Rocky Mountain, and the Desert Southwest and Arizona Strip, on top of being my daily bag for untold years off and on during that time.

My website is www.VoorheesArt.com and there you will find links to my blog and Facebook page, Instagram info as well as information on my (hybrid) workflow, and examples of my photography and printmaking work, including ten years of hand coated platinum process prints on watercolor paper from the more than 600 year old Arches paper mill.

Thanks, Bellamy for this wonderful forum and your excellent contribution to my online learning arc.

Happy Shooting!

Edwin H Voorhees III

Thanks for sharing your bag with us, Edwin. And thanks for the lifehacks, very useful.

Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com
Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.

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Cheers
Japancamerahunter