Information needed

[Falkenberg]

Can any of You help me with some information on a camera like this: http://www.lauritz.com/Item/Item.aspx?LanguageId=1&ItemId=1187150&nBids=5

 

[Ian Grant]

I would have replied to your other post (Danish) but couldn't understand a word

The camera is beautiful, obviously a studio portrait camera, unfortunately the two links you've posted no longer work, the site's giving an error message.

It's not your links that are wrong, the whole lauritz.com website is down at the moment.

Ian

 

[Falkenberg]

Their site was down. Try again.

 

[Ian Grant]

I'd love to buy it but it would cost far to much to ship. I've seen a number of similar cameras, they have at least 2 or3 at the Blist's Hill site of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. They have a photographers studio in the recreated Victorian village.

That particular camera looks superb.

Ian

 

[Ole]

It's back up now.

There's something very familiar about that camera, but I can't think of where I might have seen it before. Those "hats" on the tops of the posts - they are the kind of thing that sticks in your mind like tomato sauce on a white cotton shirt...

 

[Falkenberg]

Any guesses on what year it could be from ?

Other relevant information ?

What kind of lens would a camera like this use ?

 

[Ian Grant]

Well Agfa-Ansco were still making cameras like that in the 1930's this image is from their 1941 catalogue.

So putting an exact date on it will be difficult.

Ian

 

[David H. Bebbington]

Any guesses on what year it could be from ?

Other relevant information ?

What kind of lens would a camera like this use ?

I'm only guessing, but I would suspect it's from the 1920s or 1930s, although this pattern of camera was made for a long time, from the 1840s thru to World War II. As the format is 24 x 30 cm (nearly 8x10") I would expect it once carried a lens of about 450 to 500 mm focal length, quite possibly a Petzval type with a aperture of around f3 (yep, that would have been a BIG piece of glass). I went to a portrait studio in Manchester England in about 1962 and had my picture taken with a camera like this, usually the full-size format was anything up to 30x40 cm, studios always had lots of reducing backs down to passport picture size.

 

[Ole]

Year?

I would guess around 1930, give or take a decade or three. The wheels look newer than that, and look like they might be original. So after 1930, then. I wouldn't be surprised if someone somewhere still makes these!

As I said it seems familiar, and I wonder if the last time I saw those finials it was a restoration project?

The nice thing with plate cameras for studio use was that they could take all sizes of plates up to the maximum, so even if the photographer only made small CDV's he would still get a 24x30cm plate camera! So just about any lens you can possibly think of, in just about any focal length. It would look nice with a 420mm Aplanat - a great portrait lens for the full format.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Until fairly recently, Shen-Hao had studio cameras like that with the stands on their website.

 

[Falkenberg]

Thanks for all the information. Now I just have to hope that I can get it within my budget.