Virjune Manufacturing Co: Inside Waterbury's Vacant Factory

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J and I were already having a rough day. We'd just driven across town to check out an old industrial site he hadn't visited in a while, only to find it erased. Nothing left but a slab of concrete and chain-link fence. So we took a detour. Sometimes you salvage a disappointing afternoon with a backup plan, even if you're just ticking a box. The former Virjune plant hides in plain sight off Thomaston Avenue. If you drive past in summer, you'll miss it completely. Trees and shrubs swallow the building whole, nature reclaiming what industry left behind. Come winter, though, when the branches go bare and the world turns gray, the red brick skeleton reveals itself. Even then, you have to know where to look. I pulled up old Sanborn maps to trace the building's history. The earliest tenant was an auto body shop in 1922. By February 1950, something bigger had moved in. The map labels it simply "Stamping Wks." No company name. No flourish. Just function. That namele...
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eBay Vintage Lens Buy: Asanuma Auto-Tele 135mm 1:2.8



This Japanese lens was made by Asanuma Shokai in the early '10s and '20s. The lens is pretty well built for these particular types of old manual lenses. It s pretty light and not to solid or heavy like a Takumar. A good choice for a short tele-photo lens in the camera bag. So far the images are pretty sharp and overall great contrasting colors. A lens I will be surely using for the foreseeable future.

Asanuma Shōkai has been a Japanese distributor of photographic supplies from the 19th century to the present day (2010). It manufactured its own large-format studio or field cameras, and also some amateur cameras in the 1910s and 1920s. Today it is best known for its range of accessories sold under the brand King.










Source: Photo Pentax, Camerapedia,

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