Photo Quint
The Photo Quint is a simple camera made as a circular card box of top and bottom mating cylindrical parts. The camera is attributed to Offenstadt France (perhaps associated with children's comic-books published by Offenstadt Frères[1]) Some examples of the Photo Quint are rather crudely painted, and hold five plates, 4x5cm in size.[2][3] The George Eastman Museum has one described as for five 2-inch square plates.[4] This example is also more neatly made and decorated than others, and may be a later version. It is still a very poor shadow of the American Photake, a metal-bodied camera with a shutter and viewfinder (the Photo Quint's lens cap is its only shutter), whose patent the Photo Quint may have breached.
Across the top part of the box there is a trapezoidal enclosure of card, and there is a short lens-tube on the outside, adjacent to the narrow end of this tube. The bottom part of the box has five holes regularly around the side-wall. A pair of vertical card flaps on the side opposite each hole holds a plate. These flaps probably help to control spillage of light within the camera, too. The lens is brought to bear on each plate in turn by rotating the bottom part.
The camera (the Eastman Museum example) is 5.8cm tall and 10cm in diameter.[4]
Notes
- ↑ Offenstadt Frères at Wikipedia.
- ↑ Red Photo Quint sold at the 36th Leitz Photographica Auction, in June 2020.
- ↑ Dark green Photo Quint sold at Christie's auction 5692 Cameras and Photographic Equipment in September 2005.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Purple Photo Quint for 2-inch plates, at George Eastman Museum.
