EBONY SV8X10E REVIEW
My Ebony is not the first 8x10 camera I have owned, for about four years I worked with a different piece of equipment from a well respected camera builder. It was a good camera.
The problem I faced, was the subject I have chosen to photograph, Death Valley National Park and the neighboring eastern Sierra regions of California. These area's are known for their extreme climates, very hot, very dry and very, very windy, not the best place's to set up a large format camera. Over the years I had lost many images to the wind. Trying to capture a majestic Lenticular cloud while watching my camera shake and wobble in the wind was very frustrating to me. After loosing one particularly important image, I decided that was it, I was selling the camera and I was going to find something that worked, even if I had to build it myself. Thankfully that didn't happen.
I had heard of Ebony camera's, but I had never seen one, in fact, until the day mine arrived I had never seen one. So it was by reputation only that I made what is a considerable purchase. Ebony camera's are expensive. I ordered mine through Fred Newman's View Camera Store and it arrived a couple of months later. My first impression of the camera was one of amazement, you just don't see workmanship like this anymore, was what went through my mind. I had ordered the SV8X10E variant, which meant it had been constructed from seasoned ebony hardwood. The metal, as with all of Ebonies camera's is titanium. Setting the camera on a tripod for the first time, I started to notice all the little convenient features the camera offers, like the zero'd-out marks on both the front and rear faces of the front standard and the wonderful hinged mirror that sits atop the rear standard, a very useful feature for those of us who are vertically challenged! The real test came a day or so later when I took the camera out for the first time in a late summer storm, near my home in the Alabama Hills. The clouds were amazing, the light was great and the wind was even greater. I took the Jeep to the top of a near by hill and set up the Ebony. The wind was so strong that it actually inflated the T-shirt I was wearing and made a whistling sound as it blew through the metal components of the camera, I figured the wind at 35 to 40 miles per hour. The camera, mated to a large Reiss tripod stood there like a rock, not the slightest movement. Here's the image I made.
In the past two years, I have added two very useful options to the camera, a custom made ebony ground glass protector and the all weather focusing cloth........Now all I need is an Ebony 8x20 !
Phil's Ebony SV8X10E