Master cameramaker Jack Tait and his handmade 6x12

I first saw a pic of this camera in Lee Frost's well known book 'Panoramic Photography' about five years ago. Recently while re-reading the same book, my interest in this camera got rekindled and thanks to Matt Sampson, who told me about the person behind this camera.

Mr. Jack Tait constructed a number of beautiful precision cameras including this one and all were sold away. Besides building cameras he  established  two schools of photography, one of design, written a few books and practiced as a freelance. Being a lover of analog gadgets I very much liked his hand built analog plotting devices or Taitographs: a discipline important enough to be the topic of someone's PhD thesis.

This 6x12 panoramic camera comes with a rising front and shifting viewfinder., making it very suitable for architectural panorama. In his own words, "This was made using a Mamyia 6x12 back and to my knowledge was the first  6x12 camera to have  movable rising front with a fully tracking viewfinder."

I thank Mr. Tait for providing information and pictures of  many  of his handmade cameras which I'll be publishing serially in my blog.

His website being:

http://web.me.com/jacktait/Taitographs2/

Do visit his website to know more about him, his cameras and other very interesting objects.