4x5 Calumet CC-400

A monorail made in Chicago and designed with style.

 

4x5 Calumet CC-400 on a Gitzo R. No. 4 tripod head. (Color photos of the camera were made with a Nikon F, 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor-P.C, and Portra 400.)

 

A standard monorail camera in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s

This camera was in production in Chicago in the 1960s and 70s and was popular at the time. Ansel Adams used one to make two of the photographs in the 1970 edition of his book Camera and Lens. The camera itself appears in numerous photos in that book; Adams used it to illustrate the capabilities of large format cameras.

 
 

4x5 Calumet setup for the plant photo below. The camera is on a Zone VI tripod with a Majestic head. (Photo taken with a Nikon F, 35mm f/2.8 Nikkor-S, Tri-X, 2024.)

Bloody Mary Philodendron. Negative: 4x5 Calumet CC-400, 210mm f/6.8 Caltar-HR, Arista-Edu 400 film. Print: Cyanotype on Bergger COT 320 paper. Both 2024.

 

4x5 Calumet CC-400 on a Majestic tripod head. The lens board is from a 4x5 Korona View, a wooden flatbed camera.

4x5 Calumet CC-400 on a Majestic tripod head.

 

Design

The 4x5 Calumet has more distinct styling than other monorails. It has shiny chrome parts and some sculptural form. This is a selling point in the company’s Spring 1970 catalog:

‘The Calumet looks modern; important when appearance counts with a customer’.

Functional design elements include:

  • Non-modular design. The rail, bellows, and back are fixed (non-removable). Separate Calumet cameras of similar design were available with shorter and longer bellows and rails.

  • The back revolves and has a bail (a lever that lifts the ground glass frame away from the camera back. It makes film holder insertion smoother and easier.)

  • Complete movements except for rear rise. Front rise is geared. Axis tilts.

  • Coarse and fine focus adjustments front and rear.

  • The position of the camera on the rail clamp is adjustable using a geared knob. An unusual and useful feature.

  • Nearly all metal construction. A solid, heavy camera. The only non-metal parts are the star-shaped knobs, the black monorail caps, the strap, and my wooden lens board which is non-original.

A comparison of three monorails (Sinar F, Super Cambo, Calumet) is on the Sinar F page.

References / further reading

Adams, Ansel. 1970, Camera and Lens: The Creative Approach. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Morgan and Morgan.

The 4x5 Calumet camera is credited with the photographs Roots, Foster Gardens, Honolulu (p. 20) and Colton Hall, Monterey, California (p. 177).

Calumet Photographic, Inc. 1970 (Spring). Photographic Equipment for the Professional. Elk Grove Village, Illinois (source for the quote about the camera’s styling).

My camera is labeled ‘Calumet Manufacturing Company, Chicago, Illinois’, consistent with the company’s Jan. 1965 catalog. It seems the company moved to the suburbs sometime between 1965 and 1970.

Stroebel, L. 1993. View Camera Technique, 6th ed. Boston: Focal Press.