Dawe Instruments
Dawe Instruments of London was the maker or seller of at least two cameras, in the years following the Second World War. Advertisements reproduced at Graces Guide give a company address in Brentford in 1947, and two addresses in Ealing in later years.[1] The announcement of the Nelrod camera in the British Journal Almanac (BJA) gives a Piccadilly, London address.
Dawe made a wide variety of electronic instruments, including oscilloscopes and stroboscopes. Some of these were for industrial measurement; testing of textiles or wood.[1] Perhaps in a progression from the stroboscope business, the company produced both studio and portable photographic flash units. The two cameras marketed by Dawes both allow for a camera-mounted flash; this uses a gas-discharge tube, instead of (or as well as) disposable flash-bulbs.
Cameras
Nelrod Liteflash
The Liteflash, made in about 1950, is a press camera of sorts, for quarter-plate[2] or 4x-inch exposures (film or plates in single metal dark-slides; a 120 roll-film holder could presumably also be used). Notes in the BJA state that the camera was designed by G H Williamson Photographic Appliances of Oxford, but sold by Dawe. The body incorporates a coupled rangefinder at the top. Instead of a folding bed at the front, there is a boxy front superstructure, with an improbably large machined-aluminium focusing knob on the side, and a large focus-distance scale and pointer on the top. The lens and shutter are mounted on the front of this.
An example shown by the Science Museum, said to be quarter-plate, has a 135mm f/4.7 Xenar in a Synchro-Compur shutter.[2] A flash unit (Liteflash, based on a Mullard gas-discharge tube) is mounted on the right of the camera (user's right), and there are separate sockets on the left of the front superstructure to allow triggering of external Liteflash units or bulb flash. There is a leather strap-handle on the left, behind which another electrical connector can be seen; it seems likely that this is for external power for the built-in flash unit. There is a simple aluminium folding frame-finder on the top. The camera has a table-stand (so that it sits stably on a flat surface).
Another camera sold by Christies, identified as model 1712B, has a 5½-inch f/4.5 Ross Xpres in a Compur shutter and also a focal-plane shutter (which the Science Museum example lacks).[3] The flash mounting is on the left of the body in this example. This camera conforms quite closely to the description in the British Journal Almanac of 1950, which does not mention a quarter-plate size; so perhaps the Science Museum example is a prototype or special-request. The example sold at Christie's is numbered 56, perhaps suggesting that not very many were made in any case.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Dawe Instruments notes and advertisements, at Grace's Guide.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Nelrod Liteflash camera in the Science Museum collection.
- ↑ Nelrod Liteflash camera serial no. 56, sold by Christie's in 2002.
