Need help to identify Chinese camera

[CarlGamaz]

Hello,
I recently bought this large format camera but i don't know anything about it.
As it's written on the plate, it seems to be a chinese camera may be manufactured in 1968.
It can be 13cmx18cm ou 5"x7" format.

Can anybody here tell me something more about it ?
The camera was sold without any film holder so i'm looking for one.
Best regards from France,
Carl,

223583
223584
223585

[Tin Can]

Carl, Welcome!

Maybe Chinese but maybe not

Looks what the Brits call Bitza

I see a front frame that is very Linhof as is the 3 leg roller base

The wood bits are adapted to Linhof too

The double pipe rail is odd to me

What did the seller tell you?

Give us more dimensions

[CarlGamaz]

Hi Tin,
The seller only told me the cost.

I'm not sure it's a Bitza ( excepted the lens ). Here is another picture of a quite same camera found on the web.

223591

[reddesert]

The characters at upper left of the nameplate might give a clue as to where it's from; there were a number of different enterprises making cameras in China. Really need someone who can read Chinese. I can't. The other parts of the nameplate are similar to the English translation: top right is something like "studio photo camera" and bottom characters are certainly "People's Republic of China" (Google translate helps).

1968 was a very turbulent time in China, and I don't know if the 68 in the serial number suggests it was made then.

The hinged groundglass looks similar to some wooden cameras that take, I think, "book form" plate or film holders rather than now-standard slide in holders. B.S. Kumar might be able to say more about that as he knows a lot about Japanese wood cameras with similar backs.

[wsit]

It’s simplified Chinese which indicates Mainland china.

It also says studio camera, p.r.o.c. So probably from China.

[kinglang]

Ashamed, looks like a very unknown camera that I haven't heard of.

[xkaes]

Douglas St. Denny's book, "Cameras of the People's Republic of China" does not list any camera from China over the 120 film size. Not that his book covers every Chinese camera. Far from it, and he does not cover any cameras from recent decades, of course, such as the electronic 35mm cameras (www.subclub.org/minchin (http://www.subclub.org/minchin)), and the Shen Hao large format models.

Still, a metal large format camera from China in the 1960's? I suspect it is a modified Western camera. At the time, Shanghai and other camera makers were taking Russian, Japanese, and European cameras and trying to make their own copies. A few examples are the Ricoh, Rollei, and Minolta 35mm cameras.

This could be an "escaped" prototype.

[reddesert]

China is a big country and IMO there was likely large format camera manufacture before recent times, for whatever reason St Denny may not have wished to cover them. The OP's camera has elements that could be modeled on imported Western cameras, but are there elements that were literally modified from a Western camera? The standards are big pieces of cast metal like a Linhof, but they don't actually look the same as Linhof monorails I have seen or can find pictures of.

Here are a few photos I took of large format cameras in the Shanghai Camera Museum when I visited it a few years ago. These are wood cameras, not metal-body.
224423
Studio portrait camera, has a serial number plate of similar style to the OP's camera.
224424
Studio portrait camera with stand.

224425
Wood field camera, perhaps modeled after a Japanese wood field? Maybe someone who knows more about wood field cameras can identify what it was modeled on. Unfortunately the museum label is not readable in my photo (maybe "Wood X x Y Large Format Camera"), and I forget what it said. The lenses are in barrel and might be Japanese or Western made.

I didn't see a metal large format camera there or I'm sure I would have taken a photo. There are a lot of 35mm and TLRs; they have some of the old tooling, workbenches etc from the Shanghai Seagull factory on display, and examples of the rare Red Flag and East Wind Leica and Hasselblad copies.

On the http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/chinese%20001.htm site there's some pictures of Chinese LF cameras in among the many others:

http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/chinese%20017.htm wood field camera about halfway down the page

http://www.novacon.com.br/odditycameras/chinese%20022.htm Photo of collector Zhao Zhenxin with another example of the OP's camera, with a translated newspaper article about him.

Here's another interesting article about Chinese camera collectors and their museums: https://inf.news/en/photography/a775fb5a91e69b08359740dd9924f4b9.html