Kodak Regent

This article describes the 620 rollfilm Regent sold by Kodak; Ansco gave the name Regent to a folding 35mm camera.

image by Charlie Kamerman (Image rights)

The Regent was a dual-format 6x9cm & 6x4.5cm 620 film folding camera made by Kodak AG (former Nagel company), from 1935-1939.

It had an original design, very rounded like a piece of soap, with a grained morocco leather covering. When closed it looked quite streamlined. It was an advanced camera with a coupled rangefinder and a folding optical finder. Two sliding pieces could be set in the finder for using the smaller format with a mask inserted at the film-plane. A pull-out knob on the baseboard was rotated for focussing, it moved the front assembly on a sliding rack and a pointer showed the distance on a scale at the front. The 10.5cm lens was either a Schneider Xenar f/4.5, Xenar f/3.8, or Zeiss Tessar f/4.5, in a Compur-S or Compur-Rapid shutter.

Regent with Zeiss Tessar 10.5cm f/4.5 images by Geoff Harrisson (Image rights)

The Regent II was introduced in 1939. It had a more conventional design with a squared chrome top plate, and with more features, but only single format - 6x9 frames, on 120 film. The release button acted at the same time as a focusing button. It had a Schneider Xenar 10.5cm f3.5 and a Compur-Rapid shutter to 1/400. The Regent II is considered to be very rare.

Links

• The Kodak site by Brian Wallen has a page about the Regent
• The Kodak Regent Camera (1935-39), an article by K. Kekatos at the Chicago Photographic Collectors Society
• Ross Alford's Classic Rollfilm Camera page has a 3D photo of a Regent

• Kodak Regent On Mischa Koning's Kodak Classics