Mentor Reflex
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| 6x9 Mentor Studio Reflex image by Klara Keler (Image rights) |
The Mentor Reflex is a box-form single lens reflex camera made by Goltz & Breutmann. Their first SLR was simply called the Spiegel-Reflex-Kamera, and made in about 1898[1], but is the precursor of the Mentor Reflex of 1905 onward. The camera was redesigned several times: McKeown lists versions of 1905, 1907, 1911, 1914 and 1926.[1] All of these are wooden-bodied, box-form SLR cameras, with the lens-board mounted at the front of a bellows with rack-and-pinion focusing. The board allows front rise. The camera has a ground-glass focusing screen at the top of the body, with a folding leather hood. A ground-glass screen can also be fitted at the back, using the camera as a view camera. The camera has a focal plane shutter, which might have speeds 1/8-1/1300 second.
The name is also applied to the Mentor Studio Reflex (strictly a different model, with more front camera-movements), made from 1927 until the 1950s (and again redesigned more than once), and may perhaps also refer to the Mentor Folding Reflex (Klapp-Reflex) with a more compact, collapsing body, and Mentor Sport-Reflex (with a wire-frame finder and helical (not bellows) focusing, for speed of use). Stereo models were made, and some of the cameras were available in tropical materials (to better resist humidity and insect attack).
The Mentor Reflex was available for several plate sizes (and later, sizes of cut film): 6x9, 6.5x9, 9x9, 9x12, 10x15 and 13x18 cm.
Many different lenses were supplied with the cameras over the long period they were made. Most early cameras have double anastigmats, including lenses by Meyer and Goerz. Later cameras often have Tessars.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 McKeown, James M. and Joan C. McKeown's Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras, 12th Edition, 2005-2006. USA, Centennial Photo Service, 2004. ISBN 0-931838-40-1 (hardcover). ISBN 0-931838-41-X (softcover)., p659.
