LF Newbie

Yesterday I succumbed to an impulse buy and won an Ica Ideal 385 13x18cm plate camera to add to my 35mm and medium format collection!

The seller says that it is adapted to the common "million type" of plate holder, and is supplied with two holders. I am going to wait until I get my hands on it to investigate further, but does "million type" make sense to anyone here? Are these plate holders something I could buy relatively easily?

I have access to a workshop, so given two existing holders to copy I can always build a few more if needs be, but I would prefer to buy some ready made if possible.

Ian

My guess is he means it's been converted to take standard film holders. If it hasn't instead of making new holders I'd adapt a 5x7 back to it.

Building holders is a lot more work and more demanding then just fitting a new back

"Millionenfalz" is one of the very many different "standards" for metal single-plate holders found on old German cameras. This is one of the more available ones, far easier than finding a wooden holder to fit a nameless plate camera...

As long as you know what you are looking for, they are fairly easy to find. The sheet film inserts can be a bit more difficult to find, but there's always jam in an emergency!

Thank you Ole. After searching on Google I could only find an ebay item which finished last year. Do you know of a source for these holders, or is it a case of watching ebay - ebay.de seems a good place to look?

I would say it's a typical "watch ebay.de" type of thing, yes.

You could try This Austrian photographica shop, it's been useful to me a few times.