A deliberate giant with eight careful moves. The GW690’s EBC Fujinon 90mm f/3.5 rides a No.0 leaf shutter to stamp 6×9 frames—eight shots per 120 roll—asking for stance, breath, and a steady focus pull. No meter—just you, a bright coupled RF, and the moment. Massive. Calm. Formidably graceful in its own way.
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Origin Story
I found him in a dented eBay box that smelled faintly of old carpet and airport. The listing said Fujica GW690—Professional 6×9—works, mostly. Big as a lunch tray, heavy as a promise. When I lifted it out, the room went very still, like the floor was deciding whether to bow.
“Hachiyama,” he said inside my head, soft as a temple bell. And then, quieter: “Please.”
He was famous once, 1979, a sumo man with a calm face and a center of gravity like a secret. He called home the Eight Mountains—a valley ringed by eight old peaks people claimed could hold the weather in their bowls. That’s where his wife waited for New Year’s, family gathered, rice cakes cooling, everyone pretending not to watch the road.
He’d been on a small plane to get there. Before boarding, a shy fan asked for a photo—“Just us, please, champion”—and up came a Fujica, the big one folks used for teams and wedding crowds. Hachiyama stepped in gently, placed everyone’s feet as if arranging stones in a garden, and the fan pressed the shutter. A storm marched in off the coast like it had tickets. After that, the story narrows: the plane went wrong, the radio went quiet, the mountains kept their weather.
The fan’s camera kept Hachiyama.
He lived there for years, a courteous ghost inside a big rectangle, while the fan grew old and the world downsized. When the camera finally hit the auction block, I clicked Buy Now and didn’t realize I was adopting nobility.
Around Spirit Craft Studio, he moves almost invisibly—wide, careful, unhurried. The other spirits tilt toward him like sunflowers. Mama Minny presses a peppermint into the camera bag and tells me to mind my back. Rockin’ Rene tries to sticker the lens hood; he just smiles and she peels it off, embarrassed. Penelope peeks at him from the Polaroid and offers a paper tongue; he bows. Gus gives a single approving nod—the strong recognize the steady.
Shooting with Hachiyama, the world grows patient. That 6×9 frame is a dohyo, a ring, and the picture won’t start until we both settle. He likes tripods, morning light, hands folded, shoes placed square. He whispers the smallest directions—“Breathe from the heel… See where the weight goes”—and my subjects somehow stand truer, as if gravity signed the model release. Even Annie behaves, sitting in the grass like a tiny referee.
Every now and then the negatives show his footprints: a faint tremor in the edge of a wall, as if he’d done a soft shiko stomp to wake the floor. Sometimes the corners darken like a curtain drawing respect for whatever stands in the middle. And once, at dusk, I swear a cloud shaped itself into eight humps and held the rain the whole time we shot.
He doesn’t talk much about the flight. When he does, it’s like recounting a ceremony. “We lined our bodies,” he says. “We made a picture. We stepped aboard. The sky made another picture.” I asked if he ever reached the Eight Mountains again. He considered, then said, “If you carry a place correctly, it arrives.”
We checked on his wife, the gentle way Spirit Craft does—through records, through a friend-of-a-friend, through a mailbox that’s more shrine than box. She lived a long life. She kept a framed photograph by the door: a group at an airport, everyone smiling the shy smile of people near a champion. In the middle, Hachiyama’s stance is easy, feet just so, as if he’s already holding the storm in place.
On set, he’s the quietest coach. If I rush, he hums low until I match his tempo. If I fret about focus, he reminds me that clarity is a balance, not a fever. When the shutter goes—big, satisfying clack—he breathes “Hajime,” like a start and a prayer share a syllable.
We keep his camera clean and his rituals simple. A soft cloth. A bow before the first frame. Eight careful breaths when the light is fickle. He likes the holidays, any of them—the sense of people returning to the ring they share. Once, after we finished a family portrait in a park, he rested in the bag and said, “A good picture is a house with its doors open.” I wrote it down on gaffer tape and stuck it to the back of the Fujica. He didn’t object.
There’s comedy in all that solemnity, sure. The thing looks like a brick with a glass eye; tourists gape when I lift it. Hachiyama never laughs at them, only at me—kindly—when I grunt and call it the anvil. “Strength is a quiet animal,” he says, and somehow the next shot feels lighter.
At night I file away the rolls of 120, marked for the lab, and label the envelope: Hachiyama—Professional 6×9—Eight Breaths. The frames are big enough to walk around in. People look grounded, even when they’re jumping. The air behaves.
Before I shelve the camera, I touch the top plate like a bell. “Sleep well, friend,” I say.
From somewhere inside the glass he answers, almost inaudible: “Home.” Whether he means the valley, the wife, the ring, or the rectangle, I can’t be sure. With Hachiyama, all four are the same shape—a calm circle inside a big square, holding the weather for as long as the moment needs.
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