Lunar

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Revision as of 23:04, 2 October 2013 by Dustin McAmera (talk | contribs) (Removed suggestion that Roth may have made the camera; seen advert that makes no suggestion of this. Ref to advert, details of shutter speeds.)
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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,[1] and seems like a hurried response to the Ermanox. 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 advertisement describes the lens as a 3½-inch f/2 Plasmat, with a helical focusing mount. The lens of the only example seen[2] is a 9 cm f/2 Kino-Plasmat. The camera has a focal-plane shutter, with speeds from 1/8 to 1/1000 second, plus 'T' and 'B'. [1] Instead of the Ermanox' Newton finder, it has a simple folding wire frame finder.


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Advertisement for the Lunar, page 751 of the British Journal Almanac for 1925, reproduced at Grace's Guide.
  2. Announcement of the 24th Westlicht Photographica Auction, to be held in November 2013, including the only known surviving example of the Lunar.