'The Clincher' Camera

I have recently bought an old wooden box camera called 'The Clincher', and made by Houghton (of London?) in c1913. It is covered in black leather and is a beautiful thing to own!!

I contains 6 plate holders (for (glass?) film 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 inches) and has a wonderful mechanism for dropping each plate after each exposure. Exposue is either 'I' for instant & 'T' for time, by moving a small arrow/pointer on the front of the camera.

I have managed to get hold of some film and take some 'snaps'. Due to operator error, only one has come out!

Does anyboby else have one of these wonderful cameras, or know where I can get any further info on it.

Marcus

hi marcus

the camera you have is what called a falling plate camera.
you are right the septums held dry (glass) plates. i have a "cyclone sr" ready for me to fix-up if i ever find the time ... it is similar to yours probably, but it takes 4x5 plates. over the yeare i have had + restored a few of these cool cameras, one even had a shutter that you could turn the knob and change the speed the guillotine-shutter dropped.

you might find tid-bits + adverts for similar cameras at boxcameras.com. if you want to expose film, you can stick a piece of cardboard behind it - the shutter may go at about 1/80-1/100S. the only thing is that without glass, the septums might not weigh enough to fall all the way down. if you want to "cla" your shutter, there should be some screws on the front of the camera. if you carefully remove them, the front + shutter comes off the box, and you can put a drop of oil -- 3-in-1, sewing machine, clock .. &c to make it as good as new ... the front goes back on as ez as taking it off ...

have fun with your fun camera!

-john

I did have one of these for a time. Only managed to get a half a photo out after many tries. The problem i found that either a plate would not fall, got stuck halfway down obscuring the next one or they all fell together. Or, the film fell out of the holder. Good fun though .
Gave it back to the owner in the end.

The Clincher

Schlapp said:

The problem i found that either a plate would not fall, got stuck halfway down obscuring the next one or they all fell together. Or, the film fell out of the holder. Good fun though.

Click to expand...

I am having experience of this - none or all of the plates falling at the same time. But, to me, this is all part of the fun of using old cameras.

I will work on this problem, and am determined to get some decent pictures out of it one day.

The looks & questions I get from people who see me using some of my 'old cameras' in the street is great. I was told by somebody that, when seen with a Kodak Box Brownie, that I was "using a real camera"!! - Priceless!!

Marcus

We used to have one of these, but vaguely remember it was an Ensign ( I could well be wrong about this). The noise it made was something else!
Story was that a similar model had been taken up Everest, but I never heard whether it came back down with any intact plates