Burke and James Orbit

This is my Burke and James Orbit which I picked up on eBay back in October 2010.  These show up once in a while, but prices will vary - by a lot.  Some people just have no idea, like they guy currently listing one with a buy-it-now price of $3399.00.  In reality, around 200 bucks max unless it comes with a nice lens is what you should be looking for, regardless of how "rare and one of a kind" the seller claims it to be.  I picked mine up for 135.00 (including shipping in the original case), and it came with a not-so-good homemade lens board and a lens/shutter that really didn't work nor was worth fixing.  Both have been replaced, one with a homemade lens board (sorry, I refuse to pay someone 25 bucks for a 4 inch square piece of plywood) and a lens I picked up for 150 bucks.  You can pay anywhere from $50 to several thousand dollars for a lens/shutter combo - just check eBay for large format lenses.  Unlike the lens on modern DSLR cameras, view camera lenses (with some exceptions) come in two pieces that have a shutter mounted between them.  For a fairly comprehensive explanation of view camera lenses, click here.

More to come...