Sinar

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Sinar AG traces its history back to 1865, when Carl August Koch (1845–1897), the second son of a silk dyer from Zurich, travelled to Marseille, France in order to learn the then newly developed wet collodion process. Upon his return to Switzerland, he worked in Langenthal in the Studio "Gyr and Koch" in the 1870s where he took portraits or travelled with his equipment into the Alps and to several Swiss Cities to capture the scenery and create some of the first photographic records of many places. Later he moved on to Schaffhausen, where he advertised his portrait studio in 1879 in a local paper. For some years he worked with the local photographer Alfonse Louis Tronel, but finally set up his own shop in 1886 and moved it to Vordersteig 2, Schaffhausen in 1890. Hans Carl Koch (1885–1934) took the studio over in 1911. He expanded the business catering to the amateur photographers, by selling film and equipment, giving photography classes and operating a laboratory for their processing. In his spare time he wrote poems or expanded with his view camera the extensive collection of local landscape and architectural images that his father started. Due to severe health problems accentuated by economic worries during the Great Depression he died young, passing the business to his wife Käthe Koch-Kübler. Their son Carl Hans Koch (1916–2005) graduated 1937 from Vienna's renowned college of the Graphischen Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt as a professional photographer. During the Second World War he served in the Swiss Army as a Lieutenant in the airforce in a radio unit. He was a very ambitious character with excellent people skills. This trait enabled him to shoot some of the most sought-after portraits in Schaffhausen. He knew his profession thoroughly and was proud of that. He did not enjoy working with the clunky old view cameras that his father left him. Especially commercial advertising work was not one of his pleasures. He therefore thought of a better view camera design, especially on some of the more tedious moments in the military. Thanks to his supportive wife Hildegard Koch-Abegg, who ran the photo business to maintain the family and the development of the new camera, he successfully launched his fully modular view camera system "Sinar" in 1948.

Sinar Cameras

Alphabetical list

  • Sinar
  • Sinarcam
  • Sinar c
  • Sinar c2
  • Sinar e
  • Sinar e Leaf
  • Sinar f
  • Sinar f1
  • Sinar f2

Chronological List

  • Sinar (patent applied for in 1947)
  • Sinar Norma (1948)
  • Sinar p (1970)
  • Sinar c (?)
  • Sinar f (?)
  • Sinar p2 (1984)
  • Sinar c2, f1, f2 (1986, replacing c and f models)
  • Sinar e (1988)
  • Sinar e Leaf (1993)
  • Sinar x (1995?)
  • Sinarcam (1996)
  • Sinar p3 (2002)
  • Sinar x3 (?)
  • Sinar m (2003)
  • Sinar Hy6 (2006)

Links