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Post by majicman on Feb 18, 2007 1:39:20 GMT -5
Anybody know what this is? it looks like a voightlander. On the camera it says D.R.P. no. 258646 D.R.G.M. Compur. on the lens it says Emil Bush A.-GRathenow. Bush Glyptar. It's in pretty good condition for it's age. Any ideas as to what it migh be?
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on Feb 18, 2007 15:52:54 GMT -5
majicman,
Based only on the similarities between some components of your camera and one that I have I shall guess that it is a Feca. The similarities are, and they are exactly alike: the struts; the very slim, neat leather handle and its rings; the shape and pattern of the two levers that release the focus rail; the spirit level which is still intact although in most cameras of this type they are dried up. I guess those are rather tenuous clues. I have six cameras of this type and the features mentioned are unique among them only to the Feca. It occurs to me that it might be a Leca as the first letter looks like a British pound sign. Your pictures are rather dark so it is difficult to determine other features. My camera has a Prontor II shutter and Zecanar 105mm f 4.5 lens and a roll film back which says "Rada" althoughthe last letter is mostly obscured. Feca is in script on the inside of the drop down bed. I could not find Leca in any of my catalogues. The Feca that I did find was not anything like these cameras. Not much help I fear.
After all the above rubbish I have found a Zeca that is Identical to mine made by Zeh-Camera-Fabrik, Paul Zeh, Dresden c1937. Some Zed!
Mickey
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Feb 18, 2007 17:41:10 GMT -5
I'm pretty certain that Mickey is correct and that your first camera is a Zeca. The pinch bars for the lens standard and the design of the focusing quadrant (though similar to Voigtländer's) are quite distinctive. The only two Zeca plate cameras I've seen had the word 'Zeca' on the drop-down baseboard, under the bellows, but maybe not all did.
The letters, words and numbers you quote aren't for the camera itself, they are for the shutter and lens.
DRP No. 258646 DRGM stands for Deutsches Reichs Patent (German Reich Patent) No. 258646, and Deutsches Reich Gebrauchsmuster (German Reich Registered Design).
DRP 258646 was, I'm almost sure, the patent number for the Dial-Set Compur shutter made by Friedrich Deckel in Munchen (Munich). In the period 1928-1930 it was superseded by the more familiar Rim-Set Compur. You don't quote the serial number for the shutter, which is on the side of the housing, but it's visible in the side picture and as far as I can make out is 935663. If it is, it would make the date 1927-28.
Emil Busch (not Bush) is the name of the lens maker in Rathenow, a town about 50 or so miles east of Berlin. A-G stands for Aktien-Gessellschaft, or company with shareholders.
The Glyptar was a four-element lens with a cemented rear pair, very similar in layout to a Ziess Tessar. I don't have a list of dates for Busch serial numbers.
The same remarks about Deckel being the shutter maker, not the camera maker, apply to your second camera, the twin-lens one. Unfortunately the picture is too dark to make out any significant details. It should have the camera maker's name somewhere on it.
PeterW
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Post by majicman on Feb 18, 2007 21:56:19 GMT -5
Thank you for the information. I looked on the drop-down baseboard, under the bellows and it says Busch. Would this mean the lens maker might have made this camera?
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harry
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Post by harry on Apr 6, 2007 4:06:32 GMT -5
Hi everybody, Yes, it is an "Zeca Plattenkamera" from "Zeh Camera WerkePaul Zeh" in Dresden. (btw: it's not 'Feca' which I found several times). I also do own one.
It is hard to find informations aubout this camera as the company was closed in 1948 without a follower.
This camera is one of the older models of Zeh production being produced from 1928 to 1930. I found it aboud 30 times in the www, and each one looked a little bit different. Position of the focus, of the switches, used lenses and shutters. Mine has a Rodenstock objective and a shutter without any description exept a logo with the letters AGC in a circle.
Any additional information about Paul Zeh or my camera would be welcome.
Regards, Harry (from Germany)
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Post by Randy on Apr 6, 2007 7:34:11 GMT -5
Welcome to the Camera Collector Harry!
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Post by Peter S. on Apr 6, 2007 13:37:14 GMT -5
Willkommen an Bord, Harry,
es hat eine kleine deutsche Gemeinde hier! :-)
Viele Grüße Peter
PS: You English speaking friends may forgive me in falling into my mother language here...
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 6, 2007 19:35:20 GMT -5
Hi Harry, and welcome. No information on Paul Zeh in Dresden, but the letters AGC on your shutter stand for Alfred Gauthier Calmbach, makers of Koilos, Prontor, Pronto and other shutters in Calmbach in the northern part of the Black Forest. Carl Zeiss quietly acquired a majority stake in both Gauthier and Deckel, makers of the Compur, in the 1930s (and some people wondered why so many Zeiss Ikon cameras had Compur or Prontor shutters!). Some time in the mid 1960s when the demand for leaf shutters declined, Zeiss closed the Deckel Compur factory in Munich and transferred production of Compur shutters to Calmbach. But you probably knew that already . majicman: No, not as far as I know. Emil Busch was an optical company that made various industrial and medical optical equipment as well as camera lenses, but not cameras themselves. I believe the company is still going strong with branches in a number of countries. PeterW BTW, and not very closely related, if anyone's interested, quite a lot of German military equipment from 1939 to 1945 which contained lenses, including some cameras, didn't have a maker's name on it. Instead, it had a three-letter code in lower-case letters which identified the maker. For example, Busch was cxn, Leitz was beh, Kodak (Stuttgart) was cav, Ihagee was hwt and Zeiss Ikon either dpv, dpw or dpx depending on whether it was made in the ex-ICA factory in Dresden, the ex-Goerz factory in Berlin or the ex-Contessa Nettel factory in Stuttgart. If anyone wants a full list of these codes it's on www.europa.com/~telscope/gmilcode.doc(You may need Acrobat Reader for it) The codes are quite widely known among binocular, microscope and other optical equipment collectors, but not so widely known among camera collectors. PW
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Post by doubs43 on Apr 6, 2007 21:11:25 GMT -5
Peter, may I say that your knowledge about early German cameras is impressive!
I own a pair of naval binoculars made by Leitz and coded "beh". Without taking a look, I believe the case they are in is dated 1943. One ocular is cracked but I've never made an effort to have the lens replaced..... or even know if it can be.
Walker
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 7, 2007 9:34:18 GMT -5
Thanks, Walker.
The period 1920 to about 1950 has always been my main interest in cameras and related stuff, which usually means German cameras as so many advances in camera and lens design during this period were made in Germany.
Partly, I suppose, this interest is because when I first started getting fascinated in cameras in the late 1940s - early 1950s, the majority of cameras worth having were made in Germany before the war. I read and absorbed everything I could lay my hands on about them.
A lot of it stuck, but the retrieval system of the chaotic database I call my memory doesn't work as well as it used to, though the broad outline's still there.
My other main interest is in European social and industrial history, which led to wanting to know more about the people who designed these cameras and the companies that made them.
Some years ago it was thought that much of the detail information had been lost when company archives in Germany were destroyed by bombing during the war, particularly those in and around Dresden which was the main centre for camera factories. However, in the last ten or so years dedicated German camera historians have dug out information from all sorts of places and published it either on the internet or in privately printed books and booklets.
Strangely enough, information about German camera making before 1939 is now becoming easier to find than that of the post-war camera making scene in the former DDR, first restarted under Russian control and later with mergers and the formation of the various VEBs, with Carl Zeiss and the Zeiss Foundation seeming to have more say than either the occupying Russian forces or, later, the East German government but, as usual, staying very much in the background with the long-term attitude that companies, politicians and ideologies come and go, but Zeiss goes on for ever.
It would help if my knowledge of technical German, and the German language generally for that matter, was better than high school standard, but I'm very fortunate in that about a mile from me is a friend and fellow camera collector with the same interest. He has lived here for more than 30 years but was born and grew up in Berlin where he did a five-year engineering apprenticeship. We often meet and natter for hours about cameras, and it doesn't matter to him if the stuff is in German or English, he's equally at home in either language.
PeterW
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Post by doubs43 on Apr 7, 2007 11:07:49 GMT -5
Peter, I love your description of Zeiss' attitude toward the Russians and the East German government. A few minutes ago I took a very short walk to take my first shots using the 50mm f/2.8 Tessar lens that I got last week on the Nova B. I put it on a Ricoh Singlex II this morning. My neighbor has a WW2 vintage Jeep and tried to drive it down the spine of a pile of fill dirt. It's firmly stuck, sitting on it's chassis atop the pile and not enough grip for the tires to get it off. I thought it worth a picture or two. My interest in German cameras is both pre-war and post-war. I have a number of Leicas in various models but they've gotten much too dear for my wallet now. I like the Ikoflexes, Ikontas and Rolleis but my primary interest is the Exakta and Pentacon/Praktica models. I would imagine that you already know of these web sites but I'll post links for those who don't. They are informative and nicely done. www.praktica-users.com/index2.html and www.praktica-collector.de/There's a real need for a serious study of post-war East German cameras and optics. Perhaps your friend would be interested in writing such a book? I'd be first on the list to buy a copy! Walker
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bobm
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Post by bobm on Apr 7, 2007 14:13:56 GMT -5
Agreed, Walker - all too often, the contribution of the East German camera industry to photography as we know it today is rarely acknowledged.
Forty or fifty years after they were made, we still can't get enough of the Flektogons, the Biotars and the Sonnars et al. Modern glass is certainly better per se, but super accuracy isn't all there is to photography.
This is from the audio field but the sentiments still hold I think:
I once read an account about a BBC engineer discussing the merits and technical superiority of the condensor microphone over all other types. After proving at great length why the condensor mic was so much better, he concluded by saying that he preferred to use ribbon microphones because they sounded better....
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Post by doubs43 on Apr 7, 2007 18:59:34 GMT -5
Bob, your final paragraph is revealing and also very funny! Walker
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Reiska
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Post by Reiska on Apr 8, 2007 7:03:08 GMT -5
That Zeca is really easy to read Feca. I happen to have one Zeca with a more modest lens. I captured it some years ago at a flea market. The camera, that started my enthusiasm in collecting cameras was my father's German Glunz plate camera. lauro.fi/zeca.htmand here is Glunz lauro.fi/glunz.htm
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on Apr 8, 2007 18:00:19 GMT -5
Reiska, The Radionar lens on your Zeca may be modest triplet, but it was by no means a bad lens. Schneider designed it in the 1920s in response to a demand for a cheap but decent quality lens as an option on cheaper cameras at the bottom end of maker's ranges. With its modest aperture of f/6.5 (strangely not the more usual f/6.3) it performed very adequately. Some people say that when Schneider recomputed it after the war with newer optical glass they spoiled it by opening up the aperture too far. The f/4.5 and f/3.5 versions were OK, but the f/2.8 really took the design past its limit and it was soft at the edges until stopped down, and it was this version that got the rest of the range a poor name. Your Glunz looks to be in very nice condition, and is a fine quality camera. The company started in Hannover in the late 1880s as G Glunz & Sohn. Two other people, Bülter and Stammer, were taken into partnership soon after. In the early 1900s Glunz and his son left, leaving Bülter and Stammer to run the company but still under the name of G. Glunz & Sohn. They continued to produce good quality cameras, the one you have dating from the 1920s. If you give me the serial number on the side of the Compur shutter I may be able to date it more accurately. In the early 1930s Glunz produced a very innovative little 3x4 cm (16 on 127) camera called the Ingo with a double 'barn door' front, anticipating the Voigtländer Vitessa design by a good many years. The company, like several others, seems to have faded away in the mid 1930s, possibly in the face of competition from the 'big guns' like Voigtländer and, particularly, Zeiss Ikon. Your short piece about camera and lens movements is interesting, but tells only part of the story. For a more full run-down on them have a look on my website www.peterwallage.comClick on 'Camera Chit-Chat' and then on 'Scheimpflug and all that'. There should be two diagrams to go with it, but when I uploaded it I made an error and the pictures corrupted. When I get time I must draw them again and re-upload it. PeterW
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