Alright enough of that. I was going to do a whole post translated in German as a tribute to the two German and two American made cameras that Jack from All Tribe Baseball sent down to me but I think that would be too hard and since I don't really speak German I'll cancel that idea.
I had been meaning to write up a post about this a long time ago, but I really wanted to do it the right way. I don't think I'll ever be able to sum up how nice it was for him to send over those antique cameras to me.
He mentioned have some older cameras and wanted to know if I was interested. Heck yeah! It didn't take me long to agree to that one. He sent over four cameras.
I'll try to do a post singling out each one later, but for now I'll just do a brief overview of all four of them.
First up is the Ernemann Heag from the 1920's.
It's a plate camera and it was really hard for me to figure out how to open this one up. I didn't noticed the little "bump" at first. I thought it was just a place where the leather had come unglued from the body of the camera. This was actually the mechanism to open up the lens/shutter assembly. I highlighted it with a blue arrow.
Like I mentioned earlier it's a plate camera so that means it takes sheets of film that are loaded into the back of the camera.
I'm not sure how to actually load the film up. I'm not sure if it needs another piece in the back or not. I need to do more searching online and in some of my old books to see what's going on with these types of cameras.
I've labeled this camera to show off the different parts in case it wasn't obvious what was what.
1. Viewfinder
2. Shutter
3. Shutter speed
4. Aperture setting
He sent me this Anso-Kodak D-6 Cadet "box camera". It's the most primitive of the four.
It's basically a box with a basic mechanical shutter with a fixed aperture. In theory you can make these cameras at home. Some of the nicer, newer box cameras are made from wood and look pretty cool, but I'd rather just build my own if I was interested in one of these cameras.
Now, I don't have to make that decision, I have my very own box camera.
Here is a closeup of one of the viewfinders.
You can tell that the viewfinders are a little hazy. I don't know what can be done about that. I think it's made from glass so I should be able to use my lens cleaner to clean that up a bit.
The card in the viewfinder is a chrome card of Johan. It was hard to hold the camera and the card. Chrome is shiny,but also slippery.
Next up is a Kodak Hawkeye 2A which I think is from the period of about 1926 to 1933.
It's a nice camera two. Sort of big, but nice. The only problem with this camera right now is that the bellows are all brittle and have separated from the lens assembly.
I've seen some places online that refurbish bellows and a local guy says he has a DIY book. I might go that route. I think I could come up with something, the main problem would be that it would need to fold into the camera and not be too bulky and also it would have to be light proof.
The Ernemann and Voightlander both have little mono pods that pull down to stabilize the camera door. The Ernemann is actually the release that opens up the door to allow the lens and viewfinder to be extended outward.
Here is a shot of the distance meter for focusing.
The last and best camera in the bunch is a Voigtlander camera from I think the early 1930's.
It's quite a bit smaller than the Hawkeye.
It's also in a lot better shape as well. The bellows aren't torn and don't seem to be letting in any light. The only thing wrong with this camera is the bottom part is detached from the bellows. I can't seem to fix it myself. I know what has to be done, I'm just too timid right now to actually do it.
For now I'm going to try and shoot a few rolls and see how it goes first, before I try to do a permanent fix.
1. A threaded hole for either a tripod or viewfinder2. A window for seeing the amount of photos taken
3. A little pull down mono pod
4. Button to release the door that contains the shutter/lens and viewfinder
5. Film winder
All of these cameras use a mechanical shutter and have a very primitive setup for exposure. Most only have a few settings for shutter speed: T,B, 25, 50, 100 and 200. T= timer, B=Bulb and you know the rest.
For focusing you use the little distance meter at the bottom. It's in metric so I'll have make a little conversion chart to take with me. The blue arrows are pointing at the things that you use to pull the assembly out and then you can slide the whole thing forward for focusing (1).
These cameras are all medium format which basically means they all take square photos of varying sizes depending on the camera, film and how far you wind it. This is the part of the equation that is the most confusing to me.
I've been interested in owning a medium format camera for a while, I've just never had the chance to buy any.
I've already had one mishap dealing with film formats so far, but that's a subject for another post. Let's just suffice it to say that I finally found some film that worked, but it took some looking around. I'm looking forward to cleaning these babies up and hopefully taking some nice photos.
I still don't think this post does justice to how happy I was to receive this cameras in the mail.
Thanks again.
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