Goldmann Universal Camera

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The Universal Camera is a large bellows camera, made by R.A. Goldmann of Vienna. An example sold at Westlicht was dated by the auctioneer to 1910, but it is likely that cameras of this type were also made earlier than this.

The camera, which is wooden, can be used as a conventional plate camera, but is designed for copying and enlarging plates. It comprises three standards mounted on a long bed. All three can move along the bed by rack and pinion, to control both the scale of reproduction and the focus. The lens for repro work mounts in the middle standard, which has a 39 mm threaded lens-mount and a simple wooden flap shutter to cover the lens (operable by a knob on the side of the standard). The plate to be copied mounts on the front standard, which has geared vertical and sliding sideways movement to allow a selected section of the image to be copied, and allows the plate to be rotated. At the rear, there is a normal ground-glass focusing screen, which exchanges for a dark-slide.