Ensign Reflex

Ensign Special Reflex, quarter-plate tropical version image by Rick Soloway (Image rights)

The Ensign Reflex, Ensign Deluxe Reflex, Ensign Popular Reflex and Ensign Special Reflex are a range of large wooden-bodied box-form SLR cameras built in England by Houghton from about 1908 into the 1930s. They are very similar to the Soho Reflex range made by Kershaw. The cameras have a self-capping focal-plane shutter (typically with speeds from about 1/10 to 1/1000 second, plus 'T'; the range of speeds varies with the plate size), and no front shutter. They are designed to be used at a high waist-level (with the face applied to the top of the folding leather focusing hood to view the ground-glass screen at the top of the body), but can also be used as a view camera, with a second ground-glass screen fitted to the back.

The lens is mounted in a wooden panel on the front of the bellows, which allows a little front rise (as in the picture below). Focusing is by rack-and-pinion extension of the bellows (the rail on each side of the bellows has teeth on the bottom edge, which mesh with toothed wheels connected directly to the focusing knob on the left side). Some cameras (for example the tropical camera shown here) have focus distances engraved on the rails. The camera body is quite deep (front to back) to accommodate the mirror mechanism, so that a normal lens must be in a slightly sunken mount, almost flush with the lens board. There is a hinged metal cover over the lens, which when raised acts as a shade.

The cameras were made in a variety of plate sizes. Tropical versions were made of some models. The cameras have a ¼-inch tripod bush in the base.

Ensign Special Reflex in standard finish, c1930	Ensign Special Reflex, quarter-plate, with 6-inch f/4.5 Aldis-Butcher Anastigmat	Nameplate Detail
Images by Dustin McAmera (Image rights)

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Detail of Ensign Reflex nameplate image by nigel_gnp (Image rights)

Focal-plane shutter settings image by nigel_gnp (Image rights)

Links

• 6x9 cm Ensign Special Reflex, tropical with 12 cm f/4.5 CZJ Tessar, sold at the 21st Westlicht Photographica Auction, on 23 May 2012.
• 6x9 cm Ensign Special Reflex, tropical with 5-inch f/4.5 Aldis-Butcher Anastigmat and with Ensign binocular focusing magnifier, sold at the seventeenth Westlicht auction, on 29 May 2010.
• Advertisement by Harringtons Ltd of Sydney for the quarter-plate Ensign Popular Reflex (but illustrated with a picture of a Thornton-Pickard Ruby Reflex!), in the Sydney Mail, 15 November 1916; at Google News.
• Later advertisement also by Harringtons, and now showing the correct camera, in the Sydney Mail, 10 May 1916; also at Google News: For photographing stock, moving cattle, jumping horses, children, etc., etc., there is no camera at the price better than the Ensign Reflex.