Frankenstein's Plate Camera

Hopefully this is a little out of the ordinary.

My late father was an engineer, and back in the late 50s he built a plate camera from various camera parts and added bits of his own manufacture. You might see that the tube which screws onto the side of the camera is designed to hold a battery, which can be used to trigger the shutter via an electric motor and to power an electric flash. It also has a range finder for which he ground the glass by hand, however this isn't working.

I don't believe this has been used in over 50 years. Dad passed away in 2008 so I can't ask him about this, I am going from memory. He told me it used quarter sized plates which seems correct. The focussing screen measures 3" x just over 4" but there are clear borders on the plates he took with this so they are probably 3.25 x 4.25 inch. I see that this is now a rare/unusual size for sheet film, which I could use if I wanted to take some photos with this camera.

Can anyone shed light on what parts were used to make this? The "WCG" logo is his initials, and his own design. The aperture and focus distance engravings are his handwriting. He didn't make any other cameras but had a long career in aircraft and lifeboat engineering and even longer in furniture testing.

It's a fun camera, definite;y unique

As the parts have the same covering etc some work went into it, I don;t recognise the parts.

Ian

Ian - you should recognise the lens - the wider version of our 16.5cm f5.3 Carl Zeiss Tessar

Looks like your father used some Butcher or German folding bellow body chassis for a 6.5cm x 9cm type European camera with a Kodak Eastman front standard modified. The rear film plate chamber looks larger and adapted for quarter plate with an accessory handgrip - any kind of flashbulb holder assembly bracket like a sawn off Graflex (although a Graflex would probably be too expensive to saw up unless broken). The appended rangefinder assembly comes from a cheaper origin with the rangefinder mechanism not quite dissimilar to two Graflex (USA) viewfinders although it looks like he has made some linkage between the rangefinder unit and the bellows draw. He's quite a dad to be proud of!

The lens is distinctly German in the German shutter.

Is the covering similar to bookbinder's leatherette? If so, it can be used to generate a homogenous finish for diverse camera parts. The provenance of its assembled chassis and parts then is then obscured.

If you have the matching plates for the quarterplate film, this would give a clearer idea of the format than the groundglass assembly, although quarter plate development in open trays can be very fiddly unless you have an Envoy or Dallan type developing tank.

Kind regards,
RJ

The lens, a 135mm f4.5 made at the Zeiss Jena factory, number 719946 is in a gap of listed numbers between 1926 and 1927. It should cover 4x5. I do not have a date for the Dial Set Compur. I have the same setup on a Pre Anniversary Speed Graphic from 1936. With the dial at 9 o'clock set to I/M you set the speed with the dial at 12 o'clock, cock the shutter with the lever at 3 o'clock, and release the shutter with the lever at 7 o'clock. The aperture lever should be at the bottom of the shutter with the scale and indicator at the top. The existing scale is in the correct position but is hand engraved. The solenoid? at the bottom of the shutter interferes with the aperture lever access. With the dial at the 9 o'clock position set to either B/D or T/Z Do Not cock the shutter with the lever at 3 o'clock position as this will damage the shutter, simply press the release lever at the 7 o'clock position and hold on B/D or on T/Z press the release lever to open the shutter and press again to close it.
The aperture blades of this era were lacquered paper. They swell with age and may bind or break.
The rangefinder appears to be off a Kalart or a Beseler camera. I do not know what other makes had a built on rangefinder. It is not an accessory add on rangefinder.
There is a plunger release screwed into the cable release socket at the 10:30 o'clock position.

shutterfinger said:

With the dial at the 9 o'clock position set to either B/D or T/Z Do Not cock the shutter with the lever at 3 o'clock position as this will damage the shutter,...

Click to expand...

The cocking-lever is locked when the mode dial is set to B or T. Forcing it nonetheless may harm the shutter.
B or T are operated just by pressing the release.

Looks like the outer part of the shutter with the aperture sacle is off a different shutter, I'd go with RJ that it's a wooden bodied camera that's been modified, one of the larger roll film formats. The solenoid for the shutter uses the battery pack on the left. Kodak did use a rangefinder side mounted on the right quite early on one model I can'tremember what it looked like.

I know when trying to find who used the 165mm f5.3 CZJ Tessar I own some where on a larger roll film size Eastman Kodak camera, they also used the f6.3 on the same camera.

Ian

I have attached a couple of photos of the flash. The last time I remember it being used was 1979, but that was with a Zeiss-Ikon folder. It has a two pin plug for the plate camera as well as a PC sync attachment too, for more modern machinery. This camera, as far as I know, has not been used since the early or mid 60s. But the shutter fires and the speeds seem correct.

The entire camera is covered in leatherette much as you'd get with cheap 60s radio. Thanks for the partial identification of various sections, most helpful. I have the intention of getting some sheet film and at least trying it. My engineering skills are nowhere near good enough to attempt to make the range finder function again, dad was far more mechanically minded than I.

I do have a box of exposed and processed plates, silly me I didn't measure them yesterday. The camera lives at my mother's house and she doesn't really care about such things. I believe somewhere there are some ancient unexposed plates and three or four plate carriers....but they were not in the box mum had shoved the camera and flash into. The available plates look to have been taken during his university days (1958-61, Southampton) judging by most of the subject matter. I've seen them before and made contact prints from some as a child.

Yes, the bellows system is supposed to be attached to the rangefinder allowing focusing without using the screen, presumably this speeds up the process of taking multiple photographs. Dad didn't want to use the camera before fixing the rangefinder but he never had the time - he worked right up to his death, made model boats, spent a decade rebuilding a vintage car from scratch (including fabricating the body by hand), taught himself to weld....as well as bringing up me and putting up with my mother for 38 years LOL...you get the idea...busy man!

What would be the voltage of this flash? The battery compartment is somewhere between the size of a C and D battery but I know it's neither of those. Nevertheless there might be some modern equipment. And what flash bulbs might it take, if that can be determined from the photos?

Flash bulbs are more dependent on current than voltage.
A lot of vintage photo batteries have been discontinued but some have after market replacements. http://www.exellbattery.com/
I think the socket is for bayonet type flash bulbs.
Rangefinders are set up with the camera lens set to infinity then the rangefinder arm or calibration screw is set to match on the same target. Use a target at least 5000 feet/1524 meters away for best results.
The rangefinder should have two mirrors or a mirror and prism. The first mirror is a 50/50 beamsplitter that you look through to see the subject to be focused. The second mirror or prism depending on vintage is moveable and may have some type of linkage to the camera focus track and cam type linkages to control the movement. They are not overly complicated.

My 135 Zeiss Jena in Compur for comparison.


I have repaired some Compur shutters that someone tried to cock in B or T. The main lever bends, pins may break off and one had the cocking spring drum broken.

shutterfinger said:

Flash bulbs are more dependent on current than voltage.

Click to expand...

The smaller the battery (at same voltage), the higher the internal resistance. That is why in the beginning large cells were used.
With the introduction of capacitators smaller cells could be used.

shutterfinger said:

My 135 Zeiss Jena in Compur for comparison.
View attachment 165862 View attachment 165863

I have repaired some Compur shutters that someone tried to cock in B or T. The main lever bends, pins may break off and one had the cocking spring drum broken.

Click to expand...

That's not typical, all mine (about 15) have the aperture scales engraved directly onto the casing, that's the first I've seen with a scale plate added.

Ian

I have essentially left Photrio due to the constant bickering, negativity, lies and behaviour which would have members booted from every other online group I am a member of....

But...I wanted to share this. I tidied up the bellows, ensuring no light leaks, figured out the battery needed for the electrics is a 22V hearing aid battery, as far as I can tell long discontinued but it allows me to make a replacement.....found the darkslides that my dad left....bought some 1950s Ilford Selochrome plates on eBay and gave it a whirl.....so....the first photo from this camera my dad made since about 1961, shot on a 50s plate processed in a bucket in my bathroom in ID-11 for 7 minutes with swirling every 40 seconds....shot at approx 32ASA but I think 20ASA would be advisable....f4.5, 1/25 second in sunlight......also my first attempt at glass plate and large format photography and developing.

The plate is probably the weak point here-- I shoot A LOT of expired film and have never gotten good results on anything from before 1960 (except 1 roll of PanX 828 from 1953, but that's a story unto itself). But YA DONE REAL GOOD! Good on you for reviving your dad's camera. It was my grand-dad's cameras that got me into photography, so I have a soft spot for this sort of thing. I think I've seen some Photrio ads for new plates-- can't remember if they are wet or dry, but somebody must be making them at some price point.

That'd be me with the new dry plates. I love seeing -- and playing a part in getting -- old cameras like this up and running again as much as anyone. (see the link in my sig or pm me)

Jason - are you sure you have any new dry plates - they are all listed as sold on Etsy

Agulliver - sorry to hear you've left. Too much activity online often requires recovery.

I just realised that I had made my 15th post here in 14 years (!) and the Frankenstein camera plate comes up as a reminder of the last thing I had posted. It's great to hear of your efforts to veer into a plate venture and the camera restoration - your progress and creative thinking in using a 22volt source to restore the flash is impressive. No doubt for you this is tied in personally to the camera of your late father who would be pleased to see respect shown to the son of Frankenstein.

The dry plate has the fairly soft tonal range, typical of Selochrome plates. Trying to work vintage plates with everything from P/Q paper developer, Dektol, paint stripper and fairy liquid is on the internet so perhaps using a slower ISO than ISO20 for the rest of the plates?

I was in the darkroom and opened a pack of Agfa APX100 5x4inch sheet film. For some reason it wasn't fitting into the double dark slides and kept sliding out so I returned the sheet in the box and closed it up. In daylight, it is listed as 9cm x 12cm sheet sizes. I don't know if this would fit your camera, if you have the appropriate film sheath holders.

In any case, back to the imaging: the lack of correlation between the rangefinder calibration and the lens you've mentioned, although it's hard to ascertain from the image how this has been, if at all, repaired. Check out the zone of focus and the depth of field: it excludes the subject matter, suggesting that perhaps a little more work is required to tally the rangefinder unit with the lens focus.

If the groundglass was used, I can't be clear, however in the image of Plate 10, it's hard to know if the lens standard is truly perpendicular with the plane of the film - are you able to verify, that this is not just a digital camera lens' perspective convergence issue? If the lens standard is not perpendicular, perhaps it makes sense to see the fence and the tree branches in sharp focus, but the foreground subject missed.

I hope your efforts to keep restoring and recovering what was once lost, do not cease.

Kind regards,

RJ

I’m back from travel for a few days and filling backorders...it’ll probably be a few days before I catch up and have plates back in stock.

Always keep it. There are things of my father's I wish I still had.