Help identifying camera - Ziess Ikon with luc shutter?

Hi all,

I have just taken delivery of this:

Its got a Luc shutter (still works fine) and has a Ziess ikon rear flap for the ground glass

It seems to be commercially made and has velvet lining to allow the glass or plate to slide out easily

Anyone got an idea what this could be? Its quite small, lens opening is 50mm/2inches

hard to say -- Zeiss made hundreds, if not thousands, of different cameras-- mckeown's says in one year the catalog showed 104 models with three separate lens/shutter options for each in 1927 or so -- this looks like a small and very simple probably quarter or eighth plate camera that someone put a relatively cheap shutter/lens on. it would take a specialist to identify this particular model -- i don't see anything like it in mckeown's, but they don't claim to have everything by a long shot.

that looks like a rather large mount for a lens for such a small camera -- wonder if it is the zeiss version of the Ermanox, which had an F2 lens, used 2 by 3 glass plates and was used by professionals. That camera had a focal plane shutter. Something like this would have been marketed to the consumer looking for a point-and-shoot.

Perhaps the Luc shutter was added at a later date eg when the original shutter got damaged? I would be guessing that the the viewer cover could have been replaced as well? Its quite interesting as its quite compact, it does have those mounting screwthreads at the top which is odd - unless this was mounted differently to a tripod?

Just looking at some Ernemann Ermanox cameras it seems that they are quite closely related as in my model is earlier as its got a different shutter rather than a focal plane shutter, it focuses at 100mm as well (checked it using a 10 dioptre lens). Its quite interesting, also worried about the very high prices that the Ermanox is worth though!

An Ermanox is only worth a lot of money if it's in good condition with it's original lens, and even then only some models with the high speed lenses are valuable.

In reply to Summucron1's comment the lenses on the Ermanox were exceedingly large in comparison to other cameras because of their fast speed f1.8.

This camera looks more like it's designed for use with a microscope or similar instrument, it's too simple to be anything else.

Ian

Ian Grant said:

An Ermanox is only worth a lot of money if it's in good condition with it's original lens, and even then only some models with the high speed lenses are valuable.

In reply to Summucron1's comment the lenses on the Ermanox were exceedingly large in comparison to other cameras because of their fast speed f1.8.

This camera looks more like it's designed for use with a microscope or similar instrument, it's too simple to be anything else.

Ian

Click to expand...

Thanks Ian, yeah its always the lens that is worth money, a lens will always focus light the same, camera bodies and formats change and become obsolete, it could be something scientific perhaps with the mounts at the top to fix it onto something.

I will be using this camera and adding my own lens to make some small compact images the Luc shutter is pretty fast (although a set speed) might be nice to shoot if I cut up paper negatives, would just need to find a holder for them!