Boniforti and Ballerio
Boniforti and Ballerio was a camera maker in Milan in the years after the Second World War.[1] Carlo Boniforti began making and repairing cameras in the 1930s.[2] Boniforti patented a film pack and a magazine to hold such packs.[3]
Boniforti was joined by his partner Agostino Ballerio after the War, and they produced the Perseo Leica-copy in 1947.[2] Boniforti died the next year, and the company coninued under the ownership of his heirs, together with Ballerio. They made a second model of the Perseo in 1949, and in 1955 Ballerio made a prototype of a colour-separation version of it, though this was not manufactured in any large numbers.
In 1952 the firm made the Kobell professional medium-format rangefinder camera for 6x9 cm plates or film. This was re-worked in 1955 as a 6x7 cm camera for roll film. Dario Mondonico states that only about 400 cameras of the Kobell series were made.[2]
Finally, in about 1967, Ballerio's last camera was a 9x12 cm folding-bed plate or film camera, the Linear. Again, very few examples were made.
Notes
- ↑ The company name may have been Officina di Precisione Meccanica e Fotografica S.r.l; this is stated in the notes on the Perseo at Fotocamere Italiane (in Japanese), but other sources do not mention this name.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Boniforti e Ballerio at Dario Mondonico's Mistermondo.com site: text in Italian, with pictures of the Perseo I and II, Kobell and the folding Linear.
- ↑ US Patent 1613379, Cut Film Pack, and US Patent 1613378, Cut Film Magazine, both in the name of Carlo Boniforti in January 1927; at Espacenet, the patent search facility of the European Patent Office.
