Is this a good LF camera and is the learning curve steep?

Quote:

On 2005-06-03 14:38, blaised wrote: Is this a good LF camera and is the learning curve steep?

Could you be more specific about what you have? Compur is a make of shutter, doesn't identify which of the many folding Kodaks you have. It isn't even clear that you have a 4x5 camera.

Don't give up,

Dan

The camera lens is marked “Kodak Anistagmat F-4.5 105 mm No. 2080.

The plate on the door indicates this model was made in Germany. It reads: Kodak A.G. Dr. Nagel-Werk Shuttgart Made In Germany

Quote:

On 2005-06-03 16:28, blaised wrote: The camera lens is marked “Kodak Anistagmat F-4.5 105 mm No. 2080. The plate on the door indicates this model was made in Germany. It reads: Kodak A.G. Dr. Nagel-Werk Shuttgart Made In Germany

Not a 4x5 camera. Most likely a nominal 6x9 (that's cm) camera. Might be a plate camera, more likely takes 620 size roll film. Look on the back of the body, odds are that a name is embossed on the leather.

Good luck,

Dan

Thank you for your help.

Dr. Nagel's outfit became part of Kodak's organization in Germany sometime in the 1930s (if memory serves). One of its best-known products on these shores was the "Recomar" line, which came in 6x9 and 9x12 cm. sizes (at least). The 105mm. lens on the one you mentioned strongly suggests that it is a 6x9 cm. (This is, or was, a standard European format a bit larger than our standard 2¼x3¼ in.)

If it's a "Recomar" or something similar, it will accept single-sided metal sheetfilm holders. Unlike American and British spring-back cameras (like the contemporary "Speed Graphic"), German designs tended to use a flat focusing panel (carrying the groundglass and hood) that slid into place on rails. You pulled it out to the right, along the rails, and then pushed one of those flat metal holders into the rails to replace it.

There are arguments for both approaches, but if I had to choose, I'd choose the "Graphic" spring back. The argument for the flat-holder type is that it can be made more compact. The long-extinct Kamera-Werkstatten outfit was known for producing an "Etui" model that carried a 105mm. lens, but folded up flat enough to fit into a jacket-pocket!

Most "Recomars" that I ever saw were fitted with filmpack or rollfilm adapters -- the 6x9 cm. is very well suited to making 8 exposures on 120 (or, in the old days, 620) rollfilm. A common prewar rollfilm adapter was the German "Rada," a simple (almost crude) but nicely made red-window gadget.

BTW, a "Rada" back also would fit into a jacket-pocket; so if you had two pockets, a KW "Etui" and a "Rada" back, you were all set...

Filmpack really was the logical packing to use with a camera like that, and it is regrettable that you can't find it any more!

Sounds like my Kodak Vollenda 620, except mine has a Schneider 105/4.5. Most I've seen on eBay have the Anastigmat (some say it's a relabeled Schneider).

Murray