Reisekamera

Reisekamera (=travel camera), type of folding wooden plate cameras, comprising a baseplate with a hinged front panel and a sliding rear plateholder in use from second half of the 1800th centuary until the midddle of the 1900th centuary. Generally there are a number of limited movements like vertical and horizontal displacement 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 and to accomodate various focal length lenses.

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. Smaller variants, like 9x12cm, became popular among photography students at the turn of the centuary. These plate cameras having focusing screen at the film plane requires a sturdy tripod since they does not lend themselves easily for handheld photography like hand cameras. The name "travel camera" indicates the use for which such a camera was intended, being collapsible, but not to the same degree as the 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 since the 1860th, especially the city of Görlitz was renowned for their proffessional cameras. 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. 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)(Globus)
• 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