Folding plate camera guide

[Łukasz Owsianka]

Hallo

I am looking for some information about folding plate cameras from early XX century.

Maybe you know some guide book titles about folding plate cameras like ica, agfa, ikon, etc.


Please help me find something interesting.


Thanks.

[IanG]

I've never heard of a book, there's a vast number of manufacturers across Europe active from the early 1900 up until WWII although most were German. Some companies were very short lived as Germany was in economic crisis after WWI.

My resources are British Journal Photographic Almanacs, I have a few from the 1920's, many more from the 1930's, but they only have adverts for cameras sold in the UK and British Empire.

My favourite German plate camer is the 9x12cm Patent Etui, small fit's a pocket and very usable because 9x12 film is available.

http://www.lostlabours.co.uk/photography/cameras/images/etui05_sm.jpg

http://www.lostlabours.co.uk/photography/cameras/images/etui06.jpg

The Patent Etui is on the right at the back alongside a Crown Graphic, image size is only a fraction narrower, the other camera is a 6x4.5 Ikonta


Ian

[Steven Tribe]

I have a series of selling booklets published annually by the major Scandinavian Photo shops.
These range from Hasselblad 1905 (yes they started as a general photographic dealers and put their name on anonynmous German cameras) and others from 1913, 1915, 1927 and 1934. So this shows the birth (Poco, Premo) to the period when roll film types "won".
There is a series of books on Voigtländer and book 3 (see earlier post from Tim) shows all the folding cameras (and lenses) that Voigtländer made. Unfortunately, Voigtländer and others got into the cheap mass markets in order to survive the 30's.

[r_a_feldman]

You may want to join the Internet Directory of Camera Collectors mailing list (http://lists.kjsl.com/mailman/listinfo/idcc) and post your question there.

[leighmarrin]

Pacific Rim Camera has a good online reference for the many German plate cameras:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/zeiss/zeiss.htm

Copied from Pacific Rim:
"Zeiss Ikon was founded in 1926 by the merger of Contessa-Nettel, Goerz, Ernemann and Ica, which itself was the product of a merger of Huttig, Krugener, Wunsche, Zulauf and Carl Zeiss Palmos factory. Quite a bit of history is wrapped up into this company." As Zeiss or the pre-merger companies made many of the plate cameras, this is a good starting reference point.

The Ica (and later Zeiss) Maximar is probably the longest-produced folding plate camera:

http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/pp/zeiss/maximar/maximar.htm