A while back a friend of mine asked me whther I wanted a set of bellows that had belonged to his father. Figuring that they might be useful I said yes and last night we caught up again and he gave them to me. It turned out that it was most of an old 8x10 studio camera. The bellows have a few splits in the corners and the base has been attacked by borers at some stage but it shouldn't be too hard to get it fixed up again.
It is similar in size to my Kodak 1A and has the same general layout but is quite different in most details. It doesn't have any makers name on it and the only distinguishing mark is the number 1635 stamped into the top of the rear frame. I would like to know who made it and was hoping that somebody might have a clue as to its origin.
The rear opening is 10"x10" with the usual sliding frame but no frame for the ground glass back. It has a poorly built full-plate adapter thats slides into the frame . One book style film holder came with it and that had a piece of ground glass in the middle so may have been used as the focussing screen although I have my doubts as to how accurate it would have been. The rear has tilt and swing but no shift and the front is firmly fixed in place.
The opening for the lens board is 235mm wide x 238mm tall (i.e almost 9.25" square) and works like the lensboards on a Beseler enlarger. There is a deep groove at the top and shallow grooveat the bottom. You push the lensboard up into the top groove and then let it drop down into the bottom groove. There is a spring in the top groove pushing down on theboard to keep it in place. The lensboard is 9mm (3/8") thick.
I guess this could have been the product of any number of short lived manufacturers from the early 1900's, but I was hoping that the unusual lensboard system might ring some bells.
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