Précidès

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The Précidès is a metal-bodied box camera for 6x9 cm pictures[1] on 620 roll film, from about 1950.[2] Collection Appareils attributes the camera to a company named MAPED, of Annecy in the Haute-Savoie departement of France, near Geneva, suggesting that the camera's name is a contraction of 'Précision' and 'Dessin' from that company's full name.[3]

It has an 'I' and 'B' shutter, selected by the left-hand control (the user's left) of the two below the lens, and released by the button at the bottom right. The other control selects between two aperture stops.[3] It has a reverse-Galilean viewfinder on the right side (the notes at Collection Appareils comment that the camera itself blocks more than half of the view in the finder[3]) and a plastic strap handle on the top. The film is advanced with a winding knob and red window.

Both Collection Appareils and McKeown show both the standard camera, and one apparently made as a promotional item for Lanvin chocolates;[2][4] this has a plate above the lens reading 'LANVIN' (and in McKeown's example, the handle is mounted the other way around, with the loop at the front); otherwise it is identical to the standard camera.

The camera was also sold as the Menetrel.[2]


Notes

  1. This appears to be the format; neither McKeown nor Collection Appareils give it, but it must surely be rectangular, from the shape of the viewfinder.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 McKeown lists the camera (under its own name, not that of a company) and dates the Lanvin version to 1951; 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). p802.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Précidès at Sylvain Halgand's Collection Appareils; the standard model of the camera (an example apparently given away in a promotion by Les Biscuits Nantes), together with the microscope also made by the MAPED company.
  4. Précidès 'Lanvin' at Collection Appareils.