Reisekamera

Reisekamera (=travel camera), type of folding wooden plate cameras, comprising a baseplate with a hinged front panel and a sliding rear plateholder. Generally there are a number of limited movements like vertical and horizontal movement of the lens on the frontpanel and tilting of the plateholder at the rear. Front and rear are connected by a square bellows slightly tapering to the front. Usually the baseplate is extendible for close-up work.

They came in a limited variety of sizes indicated by the size of the plate for which they were made, typically 18 x 24 cm and 13 x 18cm. Thus small variants, like 9x12cm, were sold for photography students. Of course these cameras are not used like hand cameras. They are used with tripod.

The name "travel camera" indicates the use for which such a camera was intended. These cameras were foldable to a compact size, but not like folding hand cameras which were their own protecting case when folded.

A lot of these cameras originated from the region around Dresden in Germany where a rich camera industry was established at the end of the 19th century. Several unnamed fine workshops made these view cameras to be supplied with brass lenses to wholesale companies who sometimes put their badge on the cameras, but more often than not, these cameras remain nameless, some even tinkered by photo amateurs for themselves. It is thought the type originated in the late 1800's and were popular for amateur and professional work until the middle of the twentieth century. It derived from older view camera concepts with bellows which were developed since ca. 1855. Since the mid-1920s other cameras types became common for amateur and professional use, but the old travel cameras stayed in use especially for purposes like making school class photos.

makers of the Reisekamera

• Eugen Loeber (Dresden)
• Ihagee (Dresden)
• Emil Wünsche (Dresden)
  • see also Emil Wünsche Reise-Cameras
  • see also Emil Wünsche Schüler-Apparat (student's camera)
• Ernemann (Dresden)
• Goerz (Berlin)
• Sachs & Co. (Berlin)
• Bentzin (Görlitz)
• Neue Görlitzer Kamerawerke (Görlitz)
• Annacker (Köln)
• E. Suter (Basel)

makers of similar cameras, named "travel camera", "chambre de voyage" or else

• J. Lancaster & Son (Birmingham)
• Stereoscopic Co. Ltd. (London)
• Derogy (Paris)
• FKD (Kharkov)

Several makers made a different type of Reisekamera or travel camera, with a fixed rear and a smaller sliding front standard that allows shift AND often also tilt movements.

makers of the fixed rear design

• Voigtländer (Braunschweig)
• Houghtons (London)
• Josef Vojta (Prague)

Links

• Josef Vojta, alternate "Reisekamera" design, at Design und Photo [1]

Glossary Terms