Dallmeyer Speed
Dallmeyer also made an f/1.5 lens named the 'Speed' Anastigmat, often referred to as the Dallmeyer Speed.
The Dallmeyer Speed is a hand-held plate camera made by Newman & Guardia for Dallmeyer of London in the 1920s. It is fitted with Dallmeyer's fast f/2.9 Pentac lens, and has a focal-plane shutter giving speeds from 1/8 to 1/1000 second with a single adjustment, plus 'B' and 'T'.[1]
The camera was made in at least three sizes: Early Photography shows examples of the camera for 'vest pocket' size (4.5x6cm), 3½x2½-inch (6.5x9cm), and quarter-plate (3¼x4¼-inch) plates, in double dark-slides.[2] The camera has a metal box-shaped body, with a folding bed. The front standard pulls out on scissor-struts from the body, in simple rails on the bed, up to a stop at the front. Focusing is by a radial control at the front, down to two yards. A ground-glass screen could also be used. There is a folding frame finder. The front standard allows some front rise.
The camera, in one of the larger sizes, appears in the 1933 film The Ghost Camera, in which the protagonist finds it, containing a photograph of a murder.[3]
Notes
- ↑ 4.5x6cm Dallmeyer Speed camera offered for sale at the 40th Leitz Photographica Auction; several excellent photographs of the camera.
- ↑ Dallmeyer Speed cameras in three sizes, at Early Photography.
- ↑ Dallmeyer Speed examined by Henry Kendall in The Ghost Camera (1933), at IMDB.
Links
- 2½x3½-inch Speed camera serial no. DS325, with 4¼-inch f/2.9 Pentac, sold by Christie's in May 2006.
