Altissa Box

Altissa Box

The Altissa Box of 1951 was a nice new variant of Eho-Altissa's characteristic line of box cameras. It was launched one year before the company became the state-owned VEB Altissa Camera Werk. Two flat knobs below the lens were the controls for aperture and shutter mode. Other than on common box cameras the possible settings were given as values: B and 1/25 sec. for the shutter speed settings, and f8 and f16 as possible aperture settings. The Altissar Periskop 1:8 lens was an even more uncommon feature since it consisted of a symmetric pair of single lens elements, with lens and shutter placed in-between. That decent kind of sophistication was enough to enable the camera to make better images than any cheap meniscus lens box camera. Last not least the camera construction was more handsome than average boxes, and the big telescopic (or non-telescopic view-through ?) viewfinder was an advantage when compared to common box cameras' smaller finders.