Repromaster Agfa Gevaert, Vertical Reproduction Camera for the Printing Industry

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Taurean

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Hi all
Im new to APUG, but I joined because my dad has come across one of these Repromaster Agfa Machines.
I have very little info about these even after I googled it. My dad is interested in selling it & I wondered if anyone still has use for one of these. any info would be great, Thanks in advance :smile:
 

Mike Wilde

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I am not up on that particular model, but I presume it is a copy camera. They were typically vertical only when they were big, and were usually fitted into a wall between the copy room and the dark side camera darkroom.

The film backs were often large, to 24" or maore to make for a full newspaper screened negative for printing pictures. Backs were often pivot hinged to allow you to load them horizontally with a vaccuum board that enables you to suck the neg, and maybe the screen too, to the film back.

The copy room side often had the lens with long focal lengths to cover large negatives, and asociated small apertures, and tables of curves to compute the bellows factor for adjusting the aperture base on where the copy board was positioned.

Small apertures led to the need for lots of light to evenly illuminate the copy baord 4 x1kw of xenon lamps was not unusual.

Oh, and in the darkroom side, there would likely be a pre-flasher lamp, to give a small uniform exposure to the film before the copy back was swung vertical and locked in place. This got the density of the negative from the main exposure off of the toe of the H-D curve so the respnse would be more linear, which can be important for screened copy dot density.

So don't be surprised by two differnt timers - one for the copy lights and one for the preflash light.

The lenses might be large enough they might not have shutters, and instead relied on the copy room being blacked out when other than the copy lights were turned on.

That is my brief introduction to copy cameras - some of which were the size of small cars.
 

Mike Wilde

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I might have the description backwards. - the vertical cameras, with horizontal flim backs wer the smaller variety. The horizontal cameras, with vertical backs, were the bigger ones.
 

Fotoguy20d

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I have a couple go Agfa super Intergon lenses from such a camera. They're quite sharp and have a lot of coverage for their lengths.

Dan
 

Barry S

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The demand for this type of repro camera has essentially dropped to zero. They're mostly given away and if you can find someone to cart it off--consider yourself lucky. You might get a little money for the lens(es) and bellows, but it's mostly scrap value. Sorry.
 

AgX

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Just recently there was thread just on this camera:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)


But most probably it won't make you much wiser....

If you were around and I had the place I would take it... Anyway, don't expect anybody to pay much money for it.
 

k_jupiter

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Used one back in the late 80's when I worked in the darkroom of a large Boston Department store. You may have been in their basement.

Nice small camera, we did stats on them, just enlarging type and small screenshots for making up ads for the daily papers. If I remember correctly, about 20x 24 horizontal glass plate for your paper, the original sat on a copy board on the bottom. Halogen lights for illumination, all done in near light conditions.

Not worth much anymore. Even as I was getting out of that business in 1989, variable type machines took over the letter press parts, and the big vertical cameras would shoot all the screen shots at once. That went away pretty quickly also.

Grab the lens, they are usually pretty high quality.

tim in san jose
 
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