medium format – Page 4 – John's Cameras. A collection of interesting and old cameras.

Kodak Brownie Vecta

Kodak had a long series of Brownie cameras. These were the cheap and cheerful range and varied greatly over time.

This article is about the Brownie Vecta which was made in the UK and presumably only available here. I was given one of these for a birthday present when I was was eleven or twelve years old when it was a strikingly modern looking camera. It was designed for Kodak by the British industrial designer Kenneth Grange and its ‘natural’ format is portrait as that is what Kenneth Grange assumed it would mostly be used for. The price in 1965 was £1-9-1 in old British money or £1.46 in modern British money which equates to £47 in 2020 prices.

The Vecta was only in production for three years (from 1963 to 1966). It is basically a grey plastic cuboid with a central lens and a viewfinder in one corner. The shutter release is a white bar underneath the lens. It takes 127 film which is hard to find nowadays but is still available (see Ag-photographic for supplies).

The lens is a simple meniscus lens with no focussing. I have not been able to find out what the focal length of this lens is but it is significantly wide-angle for 127 film. It works by having a very small aperture – f14 – which gives a large depth of field. The big downside of this is that the camera has to have a slow shutter speed to compensate. Kodak colour film produced at the time that this cameras was current had a speed of ASA 64 so we probably looking at a shutter speed of around 1/30 second. My test film for this camera shows reasonable image quality at a print size of 4″ by 6″ (100mm by 150 mm) which is as large as they would have been printed in 1963. In fact, the surviving pictures that I have from August 1968 were printed at 21/2 by 4 inches at which resolution the quality is fine.

Kodak also produced a ‘supplementary’ lens that fitted over the fixed lens that allowed close-ups to be taken. I had one of these which had to be used with the printed instructions to get acceptable focussing distances. This did not work too well as distances became critical and the viewfinder produced parallax errors so I never had a real idea of what I was actually photographing. I gave up on using the close-up lens fairly quickly.

This camera was easy for a child to use – I certainly do not remember any problems in using it at age eleven or twelve. There are indentations in the cube to facilitate holding the camera steady – and with a shutter speed of 1/30(ish) a steady hand is essential. I really enjoyed this camera as a child and still found it nice to use. The position of the shutter release and the fact that it is a bar rather than a button takes a bit of getting used to but nothing untoward. It was probably easier for me at age eleven as I had not then become used to using more sophisticated cameras and a bottom shutter release was all that I knew.

Test pictures from this camera:

Baggholm Road, Lincoln

Busker, High Street, Lincoln

At this size they look OK but when enlarged (to beyond the size that was anticipated by the designers) the defects show up. When putting the first roll of film through a “new” old camera, it is usual for the film to attract dirt from the recesses of the camera. This shows up as black specs on the final print. These pictures have instead white specs and very pronounced grain which suggests a film or processing fault. I cannot tell which, but I am sure it is not the camera.

Busker, High Street, Lincoln – enlarged to show marks

Dacora Digna

This is a very cheap camera from the mid 1950s. It takes 120 film (12 negatives to a roll) which was more-or-less standard for amateur photographers at the time. The Digna came in several versions and my example is, apparently, close to the top of the range. The camera is fairly small for a medium format camera – 130mm wide, 90 mm tall and 70mm thick when closed – and also relatively light.

The camera has to be opened before use, but not by extending bellows. You turn the lens very slightly clockwise and the lens pops out on a spring. The shutter on my example is a Gauthier Vario leaf shutter – 1/25, 1/75 and 1/200 seconds and B. As I say, this is the upmarket version so I dread to think what the lower end of the range had for a shutter. The lens is a Subito f4.5 75mm lens – a make I have never heard of before. As I have no intention of putting a roll of film through this camera, I shall never know how good the lens is (or not). The lens focusses from 3.5 to infinity (I assume that is in feet as 3.5 meters would not be very usable as a near focus. There are two Happy Snapper settings both at f10 – nine feet and around thirty feet. At the nine feet setting, the depth of field is from seven feet to fifteen feet, and and the thirty feet setting the depth of field is fifteen feet to infinity. Those two happy snapper settings are going to be quite useful. The snap-shotter can keep the focus at the near Happy Snapper setting continually if he usually takes shots of people and at the far setting if he usually takes shots of landscapes.

To open the camera, the back comes away completely – no expensive hinge on the side away from the catch! There seems to be very little holding the back in place, but it is quite secure. The spool carrier for the new film hinges out for ease of loading, and the take-up spool carrier is partially hinged. For a cheap camera, this is very good and easy to use. When the back is removed, the mechanism for the pop-out lens is exposed – it is not at all sophisticated or complex so no worries about damaging it. In fact, I was easily able to apply a few drops of clock oil to the moving parts and thus allowed the mechanism to work as if new

The finish is very poor. It would seem to be nickel plated mild steel and aluminium. The main body seems to be die-cast aluminium with just the top plate and back being mild steel. There is rust coming through the nickel plated portions and there is no evidence of anodising on the aluminium and it was rather corroded on my example. There is the normal red window on the back to view the frame numbers and there is no blanking mechanism so the film could become fogged eventually if the camera is left in the light.

I am unable to say how the camera feels in use as I am not going to actually use it. However, it fits in the hand very well and is ergonomically designed – the viewfinder and shutter release are both where you would want them to be. In fact, the basic design is fine, it is just the poor standard of manufacture that lets this camera down.

Franka Solida III camera

The first Vintage camera that I bought was a Franka Solida II. The Solida III is basically the same camera, as you would expect, with a different lens and the addition of a non-coupled rangefinder.

The Solida III takes 120 film and produces a 6 cm by 6 cm negative – twelve frames to a roll of film.

lens: Schneider-Kreuznach Radionar
focal length: 80 mm
apertures: f/2.9 to f/22
focus range: 3 ft to infinity
lens fitting: fixed
shutter: Prontor S
speeds: 1 second to 1/250 + B
flash: PC socket, no X/M switch
film size: 120

The lens is a Schneider-Kreuznach Radionar 80 mm, f/2.9 lens. This is a bit unusual as the aperture sequence usually goes to f/2.8 rather than f/2.9. The minimum aperture is f/22 which is more than small enough coupled with the 1/250 shutter speed. It is probably worth noting that the physical size of the aperture at f/22 on a medium format camera is much larger than f/22 on a 35 mm camera and so diffraction effects are negligible and so give sharper images than an equivalent lens/aperture would with 35mm. With an APS C format digital camera, the difference will be even sharper. The test film showed this lens to be better than adequate, at the least.

The shutter is a Prontor S leaf shutter by Gauthier, offering shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/250 plus B.

Happy Snapper settings are indicated in red and are around f/9 and twenty five feet, giving a depth of field from twelve feet to infinity. There is also a secondary Happy Snapper setting of f/9 and eight feet which gives you a depth of field from six feet to twelve feet – presumably for portraits.

There is the usual delayed action lever giving a delay of around eight to ten seconds. A PC socket is provided but no synchronisation lever so the flash synch could be either for bulb or electronic flash. Given the camera’s age, I suspect it is synced for bulbs but whether for M or F bulbs I do not know.

The rangefinder works well and the two images are nice and clear. There is enough separation between the two rangefinder windows (43 mm) and there is enough movement on the adjusting wheel to make the device effective. Unfortunately, as a non-coupled rangefinder, it is necessary to read the distance off the rangefinder and set it on the lens focussing scale. I find guessing the distance and using a smallish aperture to be fine and I don’t think I would use this rangefinder very much.

The other niggle with the rangefinder is that it uses a separate eyepiece to the viewfinder making focussing and composing totally separate activities and further reduces the utility of the rangefinder.

There is a safety interlock between the film winder and the shutter release meaning it is impossible to make a double exposure. There is a (very) small window beside the film winder which shows red when the film has been wound on. In fact, it is only necessary to turn the film winder 3/4 of a turn to reset the shutter which is not enough to wind on to the next frame. Not having a manual for the camera, I had thought the shutter faulty before I finally twigged the purpose of the small window.

The red window on the back which allows you to read the frame numbers has a sliding cover to prevent the fogging of panchromatic film. Loading is easy. Both the film spool and the take up spool are contained in hinged housings which hold the film securely until the back is closed.

The pressure plate is significantly larger than the frame size (80 mm wide) which means that the film is kept nicely flat – not always the case with medium format cameras. The lens standard pops out nicely when the button on the base is pressed – this camera is fully self-erecting.

In use, this is not anywhere as easy as the Franka Solida II. That camera opens vertically with the baseboard at the bottom under the lens. This Solida III opens sideways so that the baseboard is to the right of the lens when you are using the camera. This leaves very little camera for the right hand to hold on to which is rather awkward. With the fingers of the right hand curled, it is quite usable and the forefinger drops quite nicely onto the shutter release.

Small items – there is an accessory shoe – cold shoe in flash terms – and a single tripod socket on the base which is to UK/USA standard. Lastly, the film winder has a film speed reminder on its top, with DIN/ASA numbers from DIN 12/ASA 12 to DIN 24/ASA 200. On a camera of this age, it is worth noting that the ASA numbers are the “new” ASA scale

Medieval troubadours, Stonebow, Lincoln

Medieval guildhall, Lincoln

Agfa Billy Record

Agfa Billy-Record

Agfa Billy-Record landscape format

This is a fairly standard full frame 120 film camera from the mid 1930s. I think this camera is a grey import – no “made in Germany”, distance scale in metres and the tripod socket is continental rather than UK or USA. The 1937 Photographic Almanac refers to this camera as the Speedex Record but it is clearly the same camera. The suggested price is £5-5-0. As the average working wage in the UK in 1937 was around £1-10-0, this was around a month’s wages so really a middle class camera.

The camera takes eight pictures on 120 film which makes it an expensive camera to use. There are two finders: a brilliant finder and a two frame Galilean finder. I can never get on with brilliant finders – too small mostly. The shutter is a Prontor II leaf shutter from Gauthier and the lens is Agfa’s Apotar 10.5 cm focal length and f/4.5 maximum aperture. This lens performs very well – with colour as well as monochrome. Lenses from the 1930s were usually colour corrected even though colour film was unusual. This is because the new (for the time) panchromatic films were sensitive to all colours and non-colour corrected lenses would produce a very soft image.

Shutter speeds on the Prontor II are 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/150 as well as B and T. 1/25 and 1/50 seem very slow by modern standards. but the 6cm by 9cm negatives would be unlikely to be enlarged. For most people, contact prints would be normal. The lack of flash synchronisation and the 1/150 maximum shutter speed date this to the first Prontor II design and so dates the camera to between 1934 and 1938.

The lens focusses down to less than one metre to infinity. On my camera, the lens will not focus to infinity – either because the grease on the focussing thread has solidified (something Agfas are notorious for) or because someone has attempted a repair (also common on old cameras).

As was normal until the mid 1950s, the shutter release lever is on the shutter housing. As was also normal from 1930ish, Agfa provide a secondary shutter release on the camera body which is connected to the lever on the shutter housing by an articulated link. This is a seriously weak link and barely works on my camera. When opening the camera, there is a significant danger of the release link missing the lever on the shutter housing. Agfa actually stress the importance of this in the manual for the camera. The long term effect of this link missing its proper location is that the link has bent and frequently dis-articulates itself.

There are the two tripod bushes we would expect on a camera of this format and date. One is on the base board – centrally placed which makes fitting a tripod easier than on some cameras – and one near the centre of the base. Both are 3/8 Whitworth which is larger than most tripods use. My other cameras from this era have a 1/4 Whitworth insert and these may well have been present at some time.

Sample pictures:

Stamp End, Lincoln

Lincoln Cathedral

Zeiss Ikon Ikoflex

Zeiss Ikon Ikoflexes are close copies of Rolleiflexes. For some reason, they do not have the good reputation of the Rolleiflexes even though they use the same lenses and shutters – both, incidentally, made by Zeiss subsidiaries.

My specimen is an Ikoflex II and has a lens serial number that dates from mid 1936 and a shutter serial number that dates from late 1936. The camera has a focussing lever rather than knob – this was changed to a knob in 1937. Together, this suggest a date for my camera of late 1936 to early 1937. My specimen has a serial number of B17187 – this is found on the base just under the tripod thread. I am told by the Zeiss Ikon Collectors group that the B serial numbers date from 1936 so I am confident that this camera body was made in 1936 although it is possible that the body, lens and shutter were put together in 1937.

The 1937 Photographic Almanac has a description of this camera and suggests that my camera – Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and Compur Rapid shutter – cost £20-10-0 and a cheaper version – Carl Zeiss Triotar lens and normal Compur shutter – cost £14-15-0. Both versions required quite a good salary to being able to afford one.

The picture lens in my camera is a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar f3.5, 7.5cm focal length and the focussing lens a Terona Anastigmat also 7.5cm focal length (pre-WWII, Carl Zeiss lenses had their focal length stated in cm and after WWII in mm). This picture lens is as good as pre-war lenses get and pretty much as good as lenses get altogether. The shutter is a Compur-Rapid leaf shutter which has speeds down to 1/500 of a second. That is as fast as we go with a leaf shutter – any faster and you need a focal plane shutter ( I am told by experts that the actual top speed reached by a Compur-Rapid was nearer to 1/300 than the nominal 1/500). This shutter has neither flash synchronisation nor delayed action.

Focussing takes a bit of getting used to. You look down onto a ground glass screen and the image is reversed left-to-right. As you move the camera to refine the composition, the image moves in the opposite way to that of the camera and slight tilting of the camera will put all the verticals out of kilter. On a more positive note, the viewing screen is large and there is a magnifier to magnify the central portion for critical focussing. Focussing of the lens is carried out with a lever – this was replaced with a more conventional knob in 1937. The focussing lever is actually quite easy to use and moves across a distance quadrant which allows you to read off the depth of field at any given aperture.

The aperture control is partially hidden by the focussing lens and the f16 and f22 settings are hard to see. To offset this, the lens is a very fast lens for the time – f3.5 fully open. With a range of speed of 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/250 and 1/500 seconds as well as B and T together with apertures from f3.5 to f22, this camera can cope with dull weather and bright sunshine with both slow (ISO 50) and fast (ISO 400) films. The one big drawback here is if you hold the camera too firmly (i.e. holding the front plate as well as the body) it is not possible to focus as the front plate with both lenses moves to and fro to achieve focus.

This camera is easy to use two handed. The left hand both focusses and cocks the shutter while the right hand releases the shutter release. After the picture is taken, the film needs to be wound on before the shutter can be set again. One draw back here is that the film can easily be wound on too far, there is no ‘stop’ as the film is wound on far enough – something we 35mm photographers take for granted. As well as the waist-level finder, there is also a direct vision finder. The centre of the front plate of the waist-level finder can be pushed out of the way, and the picture composed through a small hole in the rear plate. As this is direct vision, there is no reversing of the image, but it is also not possible to use this finder to focus the image.

When loading the film, the film passes over a roller that “counts” the film. When the first number appears in the red window, a small lever on the side resets the film counter to “1” and from then on, you must use the film counter and not the numbers in the red window. If you forget and use the numbers in the red window, you will get eight negatives only with large gaps between them – the series of numbers used are for 6 x 9 cm negatives. This camera takes twelve pictures on a roll of 120 film (or BII as Zeiss Ikon call it.) – each negative being 6 cm x 6 cm.

There in one tripod bush on the base (there would be no point in having two bushes on a square format camera). It is a standard 1/4 Whitworth bush. This is unusual in my 1930s Zeiss Ikon cameras which usually have a 3/8 Whitworth bush with a removable 1/4 Whitworth insert.

Really, there is no a lot more to say about this camera. It is not sophisticated (as later models in the range were) but has a good lens and a good shutter and as a result it takes excellent pictures. What more do you want from a camera?

The following is an advert from the Wallace Heaton Minitography and Cinematography catalogue from 1939 (this is a slightly updated version of the camera I have described – the focus lever has been replaced with a focus knob but otherwise the same camera):

Zeiss Ikon Icarette

The Icarette (sometimes mistakenly called a Jcarette because of the fancy “I” used) is a very old line of cameras, first produced by ICA before the mergers that formed Zeiss Ikon in 1926. ICA itself was formed in 1909 by an amalgamation of Carl Zeiss Jena and others. My Icarette has a lens serial number of 1089397, a body number of Q***42 and a shutter serial number of 1065884. This means the lens was made towards the beginning of 1930, the body in early 1929 and the shutter in mid 1929. This suggests that this particular Icarette was made in 1930 – 1931 at the latest. The design is fairly old-fashioned for this date – not self-erecting and the focussing is on the baseboard, not the shutter assembly. It does, however, have a rim-set leaf shutter which was very much state of the art for 1930.

I also have an earlier Icarette, from around 1919, made by ICA and a further ICA Icarette from 1925/6.

Zeiss Ikon Icarette

The Icarette is a thin camera when closed (35mm), but measures 180 mm long by 85 mm wide. This makes it far too big to be a pocket camera. To open the camera, you must press a slight bulge in the leatherette close to the film winder. When opened, the base board has to be brought down to its position by hand – no springs here. Then the lens/shutter has to be pulled forward until it locates on the focussing control. The focussing control is a lever on the side of the base board which moves the shutter a total of less than one cm giving a focussing range from infinity to somewhere around three feet (the nearest marked position is for seven feet but the lever moves beyond this).

This camera has two viewfinders – a small brilliant finder and a cruder Newtonian finder with the far frame attached to the lens so movements of the lens are accounted for. I do not find brilliant finders very easy to use but they have the advantage of allowing the camera to be used at waist level – much more discrete for candid or street photography.

The lens has a rise and fall mechanism and if you use this, the Newtonian finder is essential. The rise and fall mechanism is there to allow the photographer to photograph tall things like trees and buildings without tilting the camera. This means that there will be less distortion in the final picture. The fact that the camera has a rise and fall mechanism means that the image circle must be much larger than the negative, which in turns means that vignetting will be minimal.

As mentioned above, the lens is a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar lens made in 1930. This is the classic Zeiss lens which is still in use today. It has an aperture range from f/4.5 to f/32 and focusses from around three feet to infinity. The shutter is a Deckel Compur rim-set shutter made in 1929 with speeds of 1 second, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/250 seconds as well as B and T (B keeps the shutter open while the shutter release is depressed, T keeps the shutter open until the shutter release is pressed again). The shutter also has a self-timer but as the general advice is not to use these on old cameras, I do not know how long the delay is. I would suspect around ten seconds. This shutter is the crème de la crème of shutters and still works well over eighty years after it left the factory.

The camera is fitted with two tripod bosses – one the base board close to the hinge and one part way along one of the edges. Both are 3/8 inch Whitworth threads with a 1/4 inch Whitworth insert – the insert being held securely in place by a grub screw. With my sample of this camera, someone has tried to remove the 1/4 inch insert without removing the grub screw damaging both the insert and the grub screw – they did this to both tripod bosses. However, both still fit my modern tripod and hold the camera securely.

This camera takes 120 size film (or BII as Zeiss call it). The spool carriers are hinged which allows easier loading of new film (and removal of exposed film).

This camera after a quick clean:

Some sample pictures:

These are fairly soft. This is partly because focussing is inaccurate – the entire lens standard moves on a track and the distance between one metre and infinity is very small. Helical focussing which became the norm soon after this camera was made gives more control. Partly it is soft because it did not matter. Photographs were normally printed as contact prints so the picture would have been 6cm by 9cm (a bit smaller than I have them here).

Agfa Billy Clack

This is really little more than a pretentious box camera. However it is distinguished by its excellent design. It is a camera of the 1930s and it is an Art Deco camera. It folds into a compact (very compact for a 120 size camera) slim box which easily fits into a pocket. It also is light enough to carry in a pocket – some other (Zeiss Ikon) folders fit in a pocket but are so heavy, they pull your clothing to one side.

The 1937 edition of the British journal Photographic Almanac has a piece on two ‘new’ Agfa cameras. These are called the Agfa Speedex Clack cameras but the smaller one is clearly this Billy Clack. The price given for this camera is 32/’ or £1-12-5. This is a cheap camera but still represents a significant purchase for a working man – about a week’s wages.

The front panel comes forward on “lazy tongs” struts which hold the camera very steady. The controls are minimal. There is an aperture adjustment – a disc in front of the lens with three holes of various sizes. These are known as Waterhouse stops. They are cheaper to make than an iris diaphragm is and more reliable – there is only the one rotating disc – but necessarily offer a restricted number of aperture options. On the Billy Clack, the options are ƒ/8.8, ƒ/11 and ƒ/16.

The other adjustment is the shutter speed. This can be either long – basically “B” where the shutter remains open while your finger is on the shutter release – or instantaneous – actually about 1/30th second. These are good enough to produce well exposed pictures with Kodak 160 ISO colour film in good/bright sunlight.

There is an inbuilt yellow filter designed for use with orthochromatic or the new (at the time this camera was designed) panchromatic films. As my trial film was colour, I was not able to judge the effectiveness of this filter in use, but as it appears to be a mid-yellow, it will surely increase contrast in skies with most monochrome films. The only other control is a shutter lock which is well worth while as the simple shutter is easily tripped while handling the camera.

On the rear of the camera are two red holes for winding on the film. This camera uses the series of numbers on the film backing paper intended for cameras producing 6cm x 9cm negatives by using each number (1 to 8) on the film twice – once in each hole – and so is a half frame camera. The camera will give 16 6cm x 4.5cm negatives on one roll of film. This is nearly four times the area as a standard 35mm negative and means that even a poor lens will give acceptable results. In use, the red holes are covered by a swivelling cover to prevent fogging with panchromatic films.

There are two viewfinders. One is for portrait aspect pictures and the other for landscape aspect pictures. These are of the “brilliant” type with two lenses at right angles and a sloping mirror between. in bright light, these are hard to see through, and I found I needed to shield the top of the viewfinder with my hand in order to see the image. Personally, I would prefer a direct vision Newtonian finder – the crudeness and inaccuracy would more than compensated for by ease of use.

The last thing to note with this camera is the design of the front panel. There are two viewfinder lenses and the taking lens on a black plate with rather pleasing Art Deco lines painted on. Visually, this is an excellent camera. Indeed, my decision to buy this camera was entirely aesthetic.

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this:

Please share this article if you enjoyed reading it:

Like this: