New (old) strange camera....?

[Emil Schildt]

I got this camera today - as a gift from my ex girlfriend..

It is a studio camera in a nice condition.

size is approx 9x12" but it has all kinds of inlays and cassettes to go with it.

What is really strange with this camera is the front, which is a huge mirror (!!) with a hole cut for the lens..

A camera for portraits? (not easy to have the models look directly in the camera with this mirror.... )

A camera for self portraits? then the mirror would certainly help..

Secondly, this camera has a round "front plate", placed behind the mirror. The extra front plate I have, has markings for three holes, so I think it was ment to have up to three lenses fittet at the same time.. the front plate can be turned, so the "right" lens can take its place...

Behind it all, there is an old Packard like shutter...

The camera is nameless - so have any of you seen this before?

(the stand makes me think it might be an old danish camera, called NORKA, but I don't know, even if it makes sense...)

[Mark Sawyer]

I've never seen anything quite like it. The mirror up front might help any sitters pose themselves, so it isn't necessarily for self portraits. It does look like a lens turret up front, but it appears to have only been cut for one lens. The mirror would hinder lens rotation, and even though I can see it has hinges on the front to open, I don't think you could open it with one of the long portrait lenses of that day in place. I don't follow the use of the hole in the back either. No help here...

We should trade ex-girlfriends. All mine ever gives me is obscene gestures...

[David Vickery]

I'm really not sure at all, but it looks like it could be a set up for copy work. A set of mirrors can be used in copy cameras to guarantee parallelism of the film, lens, and subject plains. Flat art was photographed in this way in pre-press labs.

[Emil Schildt]

hi mark.
what I didn't show, was the actual round front plate - just the fitting for it.
If you look clost to that image, you'll notice a screw in the dead center - here the plate mentioned will be screwed in..

I am not sure about the age of the camera, but I think it is not from before WWII - or just so (NORKA had to stop production in WWII for several reasons).

If so, maybe smaller lenses (physically) was used..

I think it would be distracting for the photographer, if used as portrait camera (people like too much to look at them selves), but my girlfriend is loving the setting, as she makes lots of self portraits..)

I am thinking of removing all the multiple lens option and then fit my really huge petzval lens on this camera to see what it can do.. :cool: (have to have the mirror open then.)


I've never seen anything quite like it. The mirror up front might help any sitters pose themselves, so it isn't necessarily for self portraits. It does look like a lens turret up front, but it appears to have only been cut for one lens. The mirror would hinder lens rotation, and even though I can see it has hinges on the front to open, I don't think you could open it with one of the long portrait lenses of that day in place. I don't follow the use of the hole in the back either. No help here...

We should trade ex-girlfriends. All mine ever gives me is obscene gestures...

[Nathan Potter]

Gandolfi, I'm not sure but I think I'm with David Vickery on this. I'd guess that it was adapted for some sort of copy work from reflective surfaces. A bit equivalent to the on axis illumination used in metallurgical microscopes. Flat highly reflective surfaces don't scatter enough light coming from an angle to produce an image. The trick then is to supply light to the subject colinear, or as nearly so as possible, from the lens optical axis. A beam splitter would be more ideal but very awkward in this situation. In this case the trick would be to not image the lens hole in the reflected copy while simultaneously directing the illumination source into the cameras mirror and back to the copy.

Of course this is only a wild guess.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[wfwhitaker]

My money's on the copy camera idea. Hasselblad used to offer an accessory that was similar, using two mirrors to insure parallelism.

If your EX's treat you this well, the current stuff must be pretty damn hot.

[Emil Schildt]

My money's on the copy camera idea. Hasselblad used to offer an accessory that was similar, using two mirrors to insure parallelism.

If your EX's treat you this well, the current stuff must be pretty damn hot.

well - I've always thought that being in a good relation with one's ex'es would be best.....:p

I've never really thought about the copying idea, but it might be so..

However, it is a huge studio camera so it might be difficult to work with in regards to copying..
On the other hand, it has a quite large bellow.. and even if it looks old, there are screws to shift/tilt the back of the camera...

hmmm......

[Gudmundur Ingolfsson]

There was a camera maker in Denmark by the name of Hansen at work till the mid sixties. He held many patents for cameras and photographic equipment; a special glass plate holder system for half plates and also a film developing clock among other things. This seems like a part of a Norka camera (Nordisk kamera=NORKA) the lower part looks the same as a part of a 1926 Norka that was in use here in Iceland for 50 Years. The mirror might be a part of a line up system for reproductions (Hasselblad and also Linhof made devices like that) There were also Norkas made of metal that were common tools in studios in Denmark till the late seventies.

[Emil Schildt]

hi Gudmundur.
I was wondering whether this could be a NORKA camera (being from Denmark an all..).
I agree, that the lower part of the stand looks really like a NORKA stand, but the ones I've seen before, always had the NORKA name written in the metal part.

This is unnamed.

I've asked about NORKA in another site (apug), but nobody seemed to know about it, which seems strange, as, as far as I have read, NORKA exported a lot of cameras to USA before WWII...

(I've seen an 18x24 camera, made for 12 glass plates!! and a kind of mechanical shift between the lenses.. Almost like a huge motorized camera!! NORKA cameras should be better known! they were quite fantastic!!)

Copy camera or not - I think my girlfriend wants this to be a "special self portrait camera", made for her...:rolleyes:



There was a camera maker in Denmark by the name of Hansen at work till the mid sixties. He held many patents for cameras and photographic equipment; a special glass plate holder system for half plates and also a film developing clock among other things. This seems like a part of a Norka camera (Nordisk kamera=NORKA) the lower part looks the same as a part of a 1926 Norka that was in use here in Iceland for 50 Years. The mirror might be a part of a line up system for reproductions (Hasselblad and also Linhof made devices like that) There were also Norkas made of metal that were common tools in studios in Denmark till the late seventies.

[Gudmundur Ingolfsson]

I am sure this camera was made for a special purpose maybe for someone specializing in reproducing artwork or photographing very small objects that were difficult to light except through a mirror. Hansen was such a clever guy and worked for such a long time that there must be someone in Denmark that has recorded the history of his camera making ( I would contact the photographic department of the Konngelige Bibliotek and people taking care of Björn Ochsner's legacy would know much about NORKA and Hansen) The old Norka in Iceland is made in 1926 and it was damaged in a fire in 1963 and then it was brought to Hansen for repair.

[Sevo]

I am sure this camera was made for a special purpose maybe for someone specializing in reproducing artwork or photographing very small objects that were difficult to light except through a mirror. Hansen was such a clever guy and worked for such a long time that there must be someone in Denmark that has recorded the history of his camera making

As others have pointed out, a front mirror was a usual device to align copy cameras - together with another mirror in the plane of the copy it would show a perfectly straight "infinite" reflection of the lens on the ground glass if set up perfectly perpendicular.

A camera without rail base will hardly have been a fixed installation horizontal copy camera - it must have been something special for an application where the camera was more mobile than the objects to be photographed, but still indoors (that beast, with these wheels, could hardly be moved for any longer distance over street pavement). Possibly a museum, library or archive inventory camera - a research in Denmark or Scandinavia is not that unlikely to hit upon the right one...

Sevo

[Gudmundur Ingolfsson]

One of Hansen's patented features was to load glass plates into a pile of metal septums and they would be protected from light by the septum only and empty septum in front of the one naked plate in the pile (possibly up to 12 at a time) those would be loaded in a chamber on to of the camera empty septum uppwards, after you had focused on the sitter and released the rubber bulb to close the shutter you would pull an arm that made the ground glass move backwards and a glass plate from the pile fall into the focal plane of the camera forced by it's weight only and then after the exposure you would engage a button + the arm and the plate would fall into a chamber under the camera. The whole system was almost as fast as a roll film camera.

[Sevo]

... and a glass plate from the pile fall into the focal plane of the camera forced by it's weight only and then after the exposure you would engage a button + the arm and the plate would fall into a chamber under the camera. The whole system was almost as fast as a roll film camera.

Sounds like a plate magazine (detective) camera to me...

Sevo

[Jim Galli]

Don't know about the camera but the platform surely has family resemblance to my Kodak Semi Centennial stand. Agfa had a near identical stand too with a little better table tilt mechanism than the kodak one. The mirror on front is very weird. Portrait photographers were a weird group anyways. Maybe some portrait photographer thought he had it all figured out by putting a mirror up front to distract his viewers? Maybe the mirror on the front of the camera centered the catchlight in the eyes perfectly?

[Mark Sawyer]

I think the mirror might have been for keeping vampires out of the studio. Vampires were quite the problem at that time, and being rather vain, often showed up at the portrait studios...

[wfwhitaker]

Perhaps a camera for parakeets...