Collin Brendemuehl wrote
Any of you folks ever use one? (Graflex Norita) Midwest Photo
recently got in a couple of bodies and several lenses. It's designed
a lot like the Pentax 6x7 -- interchangable finders, 6x6, FP, 75mm LS
lens, etc. Nice looking outfits. How are the lenses?
I used a couple of Noritas back in the '70s. Our Marine Corps photo lab
acquired a couple with six lenses (only 3 focal lengths) for testing. We
used the Noritas for about 6 - 9 months.
At the time I thought the lenses were very good. The normal and short
telephoto were very sharp, but not terribly fast. The wide angle was OK.
I wasn't acquainted with the term Bokeh at the time, but my memory of that
was favorable. Not great, just favorable. I remember having a young photo
officer who complained that the backgrounds in several photos on a
newspaper spread were "out-of-focus" and having to explain to her that that
was what I wanted, and had to use PanX to achieve. I used these cameras in
the studio, around the base and town (Norfolk, Virginia), and in the field
(Middle East and Turkish Thrace.) The lenses were heavy and relatively
sturdy (they sink like a stone in the Mediterranean, not my fault, but the
radio announcer working with me) and were not suitable for field work which
was photojournalism, but I assume you know that they're heavy. They used
a locking collar on the lens mount of the ones we had and that collar was
flimsy. One of our guys dropped a wide angle while trying to change
lenses, and the collar was destroyed. We took the lens to the Navy Combat
Camera Group's repair service and two local civilian repair shops. The
rest of the lens checked out OK, but we couldn't find a replacement collar.
They couldn't straighten it enough to make it work. (Today, I have access
to a machine shop where it could be easily repaired.) The camera was
fairly new, but not recently released, so you would have thought there
would have been parts available.
The camera body was very sturdy. The viewfinder was bright and easy to
focus. I don't remember the light meter, as most of this work was with
hand-held meters.
I liked the camera, but it was way too heavy to carry in my primary job.
We returned the cameras, minus two lenses, after the test and I wrote a
recommendation to use the camera with limitations, but that didn't happen
within the next few years.
You're right, it has a strong resemblance to the Pentax 6x7, Basically, I
thought it was a great camera, maybe not as good as the original Pentax 67,
but well worth using.
K.
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