Murer & Duroni

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Teodoro Murer was a camera designer based in Milan, Italy, who made cameras with a company called Duroni. They sold cameras under the names Murer and Salex. In Sweden, the cameras were sold by Hasselblad, and in France by Gaumont[1]. The Duroni company was founded by Alessandro Duroni (1807-1870), c.1835-36, as an optical instrument dealer[2]; Murer joined the company in c.1892.

There are a number of albumen photographs in galleries credited to Murer & Duroni as photographers[3]. Since the original Duroni had died before Murer arrived, this credit must be to the company or a later Duroni. Alessandro Duroni himself has a number of photos credited, including of Guiseppe Garibaldi and Vittorio Emmanuele II, King of Italy 1861-78.

Cameras

  • Blitz
  • Murer's Express
  • Muro (folder, 1914)
  • Express Newness A, SL, G and H (wooden falling-plate box for various plate sizes, c.1900)[1]
  • Express Newness Stereo[4]
  • Folding plate focal plane strut folders
  • Piccolo (roll-film jumelle camera, c.1900)
  • Reflex (6.5x9cm SLR, c.1920s)
  • Salex Murer: miniature strut-folding camera for 40×55 mm photographs on plates or film packs.[5]
  • SL (Box, c.1900)
  • SL Special
  • Sprite
  • Stereo
  • Stereo SL Special
  • Stereo Box
  • Stereo Reflex (plate stereo SLR)
  • UF (strut folder, c.1910)
  • UP-M (strut folder, c.1924)

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Notes on the Express Newness SL falling-plate box camera, about 1900, for 6.5×9 cm plates, in the Collection of Elisabetta and L. David Tomei. The camera has an adjustable guillotine shutter, six aperture stops (i.e. selectable fixed stops, not an iris), and Watson-type viewfinders for vertical and horizontal orientation.
  2. Storia della Fotografia
  3. e.g. at the National Portrait Gallery in London and on the Storia della Fotofrafia site {Italian}
  4. Express Newness Stereo falling-plate box camera for 9×18 cm plates, about 1905, sold at the May 2011 Westlicht Photographica Auction in Vienna. Like the mono Express Newness, the camera has simple lenses (not identified) but with selectable aperture stops and a guillotine shutter with adjustable speed. It has a simple reflex viewfinder in a small folding hood.
  5. 1922 Salex Murer camera in an exhibition Cameras: the Technology of Photographic Imaging at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science. The camera has a 70 mm f/5.5 anastigmat with helical focusing to one metre, and focal-plane shutter with speeds up to 1/1000 second. Ground-glass focusing is also possible. There is a Newton finder with the front part mounted in a sliding lens cover, like the earlier Gaumont Block-Notes.

Links