Summa Report

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The Summa Report is a rare and unusual press camera, made in about 1954 by Tiranti of Rome. It is the only camera for which Tiranti is known, and McKeown states that only 100 were made. It makes 2¼x3¼-inch (6x9 cm) images on 120 film (or plates or film-packs).

The camera has a very unusual structure. Essentially, it comprises two view cameras, one above the other; the upper camera is used purely for focusing, while the lower one takes the photograph. Thus the Summa Report has two pairs of lenses; one standard pair and one wide-angle. These are mounted on a rotating turret on the front of the body, which is cast from aluminium. The taking lenses are a 105 mm f/4.5 Schneider Xenar and a 65 mm f/6.8 Angulon. On some examples, the viewing lenses are Reflar lenses of slightly wider aperture (f/4 and f/3.5 respectively), by Officine Galileo; McKeown describes the camera with this specification, and an example with these lenses was offered in an on-line auction. An example was sold at Westlicht, however, with f/4.5 Xenars for both the viewing and taking standard lenses. Each of the taking lenses is mounted in a Synchro-Compur shutter, giving speeds 1 - 1/500 second, plus 'B'.

The camera has several options for view-finding. The focusing screen may be used; it has a folding hood, which incorporates a loupe for crtitical focusing. When folded down, the hood incorporates an eyepiece to form a direct eye-level viewfinder. Finally there is a folding frame finder, which erects above the camera body; because of the camera's unusual design, this must suffer from severe parallax error at close range.

There are handles on each side of the body. The camera is focused with thumb-wheels incorporated in these handles. There are dials indicating the focus distance (one dial for the standard and one for the wide-angle lens) on top of the body.