It seems that with every Tomosy book I buy, it gets smaller and the price gets higher. This is his third book. Finally he breaks with the 3 section format and jumps right in with practical restoring information and techniques. In my opinion this is his best done (if smallest) book so far, although it is not able to stand alone, if one is a novice. The thing I liked the most was the diagrams with dimensions…practical info. He needed to add more though. Even with my own personal short experience, I have many more dimensioned drawings of curtains, curtain ribbons, etc than he gives. I’m certain he has volumes more locked away. Sharing a few more would have been nice. As always Tomosy is short on explaining the “why” of things but good at “do this, then do that”.
This book deals more with wood and bellows cameras than metal ones…say pre WWll.
After the short introduction , Chapter 1 goes into the leatherwork of straps and cases. Chapter 2 is a fairly thorough introduction to bellows repair and making. Chapter 3 shows rebuilding a wooden camera stand. Chapter 4 introduces various lens shutters. Chapter 5 covers medium format and small plate folding cameras while chapter 6 delves into wooden view cameras. Chapter 7 is large format focal plane shutters. Chapter 8 gives a bit more on medium format and one TLR. Chapter 9 gets into the classic 35mm metal bodied cameras like Contax, Exakta and Leica, etc. This is a super chapter. Chapter 10, miniature format ie. Minox C. Tomosy wraps it up with an abstract where he reiterates stuff from his first two books.