A way cool article on vintage shutters

[John Kasaian]

http://randcollins.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/shutters/

[Michael Clark]

Nice article John, thanks for posting.

Mike

[John Fink Jr.]

Thank you John.

[Brian C. Miller]

Nice article! Also, everybody should look at the exploration of the Wollensak factory: Wollensak, the time capsule.

[E. von Hoegh]

Thanks John. edit - Ooops! Thanks Brian.

[BrianShaw]

Cool.

And thanks also, Brian, for the tour of Wollensak factory.

[Vincent Pidone]

Thank you both for the posts.

[Jim Galli]

Thank you both for the posts.

Somebody PLEASE!! Sneak in there and find the bins of "open"~"closed" levers and actuators / leaf's for the Studio Shutters. You know they're in there!

[Bill_1856]

So THAT'S where Dagor77 found all that incredible old glass. It wasn't the old castle in Scotland at all.

[al olson]

Indeed an interesting article. To clarify a couple of points, Dr. Collins notes that "Starting in 1953 with Zeiss’ Contaflex, a number of single lens reflex cameras with leaf shutters were developed, including the Retina Reflex, the Voigtlander Bessamatic, and the Wirgen Edixa (1962)." While the viewfinder Retinas were using leaf shutters even earlier, there was no Retina SLR until 1957 as shown in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Retina].

The first 35mm reflex Exactas were produced in 1939 according to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exakta]. Earlier models for 127 film (4 x 6.5" format) were initially produced in 1933. At the time these cameras were considered to be the 'Cadillacs' of 35mm photography.

An Exacta camera was featured in the movie 'Rear Window' in 1954. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_Window], they state that "The camera that features prominently in the film can be identified as a 35mm Exakta Varex VX with a Kilfitt Fern-Kilar f/5.6 400mm lens." I do not recall this lens. Never heard of it. As I recall, the lens was a 500mm Zeiss that had just been introduced and they used the Rear Window connection in their ads. Perhaps someone can help me on this recollection. In 1962 when I was in the Army and I was assigned to a civilian agency I had two Exacta bodies in my kit.

Exacta lost its market to the Japanese because of the camera's disadvantages such as: (1) shutter-cock and film-wind were two separate operations, (2) mirror was not instant return , (3) no aperture preview, and (4) cost. The Japanese began adding these features to their SLRs and by the time Exacta began catching up the Japanese had taken away their market.

Thank you John and Brian for bringing these links to our attention.