Black Beauty
loaded with Seneca film plate holder |
Seneca's Black Beauty was a very carefully made folding bed plate camera for use with 3¼×5½ inch postcard format film plates. Of course it was styled in black except some nicely chrome plated metal parts. The body was covered with black leather. Even the housing of the little turnable reflecting type viewfinder was lacquered carefully in black. The Black Beauty was a kind of luxury variant of a common plate camera. It was available in a quadratic variant with exchangeable back, allowing the user to switch from postcard format to 4x5 inch large format. The cameras were offered in variants with different lens shutter equipment: