Lunar
The Lunar is a 'night camera' for 4.5x6 cm plates, similar to the rigid version of the Ermanox, and of about the same age. It was advertised in 1925 (just one year after the Ermanox was introduced) by A.O. Roth, the London agent for Meyer, and seems like a hurried response to the Ermanox. Notes on Roth at Early Photography state that the firm made some of its own cameras, using Meyer lenses,[1] so perhaps it is possible that Roth, not Meyer, made the Lunar. The camera body is a simple wooden box with leather covering (and so a little bulkier than the rigid Ermanox, where the lens is mounted on a tube at the front, making the body smaller; of course it is considerably more bulky than the strut-folding Ermanox).
The lens of the only example seen[2] is a 9 cm f/2 Kino-Plasmat with helical focusing. The camera has a focal-plane shutter. Instead of the Ermanox' Newton finder, it has a simple folding wire frame finder.
Notes
- ↑ Company information pages at Early Photography.
- ↑ Announcement of the 24th Westlicht Photographica Auction, to be held in November 2013, including the only known surviving example of the Lunar.
