Quad Camera

The Quad Camera (Model 32-100 Bs) image by Luis Cozeto (Image rights)

The Quad Camera was invented as passport photo shooter for the U.S. Government by Avant's engineer Samuel Kitrosser - in 1964 he was mentioned as inventor in U.S. Patent No. USD201225. It is a Disderi type large format camera for shooting passport photos onto sheet film. Disderi type means that its camera chamber is divided into compartments, each over a part of the film sheet and each equipped with an own camera lens. Thus four images can be shot at once onto one film sheet. A special lens cap allows to shot just one or two images at once instead. The camera has one big leaf shutter - each of its four leaves opens behind one of the four lenses. Thus exposure time range is limited down to 1/50 seconds. The camera has four equal Elgeet 90mm f:6.3 Anastigmat lenses, contacts for attaching a flash gun, an optical viewfinder, and a sheet film holder for Polaroid instant sheet film cartridges. An alternate version was equipped with Ilex Paragon 90mm f6.4 lenses. Some cameras have one little lens cap for each lens instead of the special one for all.

With a weight of 2250g the camera was quite heavy.

Avant also held a patent for a ring flash gun for that camera.

The successor camera, constructed by engineer Kitrosser in 1969, had an inbuilt four-image frame to assure that images with white borders were achieved. He also invented a variant with two different compartment sizes, for achieving two images of each frame size at once on the film sheet.

The Quad Camera (Model 32-100 Bs) image by Luis Cozeto (Image rights)

The Quad Camera (Model 32-100 Bs) with the special lens hood image by Mark Dalzell (Image rights)