PeterW
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Post by PeterW on May 26, 2011 9:50:01 GMT -5
Ooh, that's a bold statement, Mickey.
How about a camera fitted with an early Anschutz focal plane shutter where you have to open the back and move a small slider to adjust the slit width, and then set the crossing speed of the curtains before winding it up?
Or perhaps more puzzling, Lancaster's Patent Rotary Shutter from the 1880s fitted to some Lancaster Instantograph cameras? It has no springs, and no visible means of powering the rotary disc. You have to fit ordinary rubber bands of different strengths to get the different speeds - by guesstimation.
PeterW
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mickeyobe
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Post by mickeyobe on May 26, 2011 13:52:14 GMT -5
All right PeterW,
I guess my foot in mouth disease is still ravaging this poor body.
May I revise my statement to "... hand me many cameras cameras that are..."?
Mickey
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PeterW
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Post by PeterW on May 26, 2011 15:27:21 GMT -5
Of course you may, Mickey. I picked a couple of rather extreme examples. Inventors in the camera field were quite prolific in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There must be quite a few designs I for one have never heard of, and wouldn't know how to operate without a lot of investigation - and this period is supposed to be part of my collecting era.
I don't think many, if any, of the shutters I mentioned ever found their way across the Atlantic when they were new. Not many collectors in the UK have heard of them except those who delve into camera history.
The older pattern of the Anschutz shutter for large hand-held plate cameras was superseded in the early 1920s by a much improved version with two external knobs to set the shutter. This, in turn, was made obsolete by the brillliant "lift and drop" one-knob control for shutter speeds produced by August Nagel at Contessa-Nettel in 1926.
A few plate cameras with the older Anschutz shutter found their way to the UK. Most, if not all, that survived are now in collections or camera museums.
Not many younger collectors in the UK recall seeing a Lancaster camera even though they may have heard the name. Even fewer, young or old, have heard of Lancaster's Rotary rubber-band shutter.
I hadn't, and when I found a filthy dirty example for 20 pence in a box at a flea market a couple of years or so ago it took me nearly a fortnight's digging, plus help from other collectors, to find out what it was, and how it operated.
(modified to take out a couple of typing errors).
PeterW
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