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,[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 advertised as 1/8 to 1/1000 second, plus 'T' and 'B';[1] the example at Westlicht has 1/10 second instead of 1/8.[2] Instead of the Ermanox' Newton finder, it has a simple folding wire frame finder (in addition to ground-glass focusing).
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Advertisement for the Lunar, page 751 of The British Journal Photographic Almanac for 1925, reproduced at Grace's Guide.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lunar with 9 cm f/2 Kino-Plasmat, sold (for 40800 Euro) at the 24th Westlicht Photographica Auction, on 23 November 2013.
