Cherry
The Cherry Portable was a magazine camera for 12 "meishi size" 5.7×8.3cm dry plates, made by Konishi Honten's factory Rokuoh-sha in Tokyo from 1903 to 1907 (Eastman House says it was made by Konishi Honten's factory Kubo). It was kept simple so that even children could be taught how to use it. Of course simplicity helped to keep its price as low as 2 Yen. It has its reflecting type viewfinder mounted on top, a finder of a kind that sometimes was called "Watson finder". Other than popular American box cameras of that time it has its lens in a barrel that's mounted on the front plate. The lens barrel contains the camera's special kind of rotary shutter that needs cocking for instant mode (see well illustrated Japanese link). The shutter is placed in front of the Goerz Choroskop 1:13.5 lens. With dimensions of only 12.5×12.1×7.2cm it was a quite small magazine camera. Another version looked more like common box cameras, having two inbuilt reflecting type finders and the lens hidden behind a round aperture selector slice (like Conley's Kewpie box cameras). Both types kept its special plate holders in place being hooked on the T-profile where they stood on.
links
- Cherry Portable at George Eastman House Technology archive [1]
- Cherry Portable, well illustrated and compared to the contemporary "Little Nipper" of Star Camera Works at Japanese website
