Excelsior
The Excelsior is a folding camera for 13x1cm plates, made by Wünsche from about 1900.
Three examples of the camera have been seen: these are wooden-bodied, with black leather covering and bellows. McKeown, however, describes a rather different camera: "Fine wood body, square green bellows with red corners, roller-blind shutter. With Rodenstock or other brass-barrel lens".[1] This (with a brass lens and roller shutter) sounds like an older camera. The examples seen may simply be later in the period of production. They each have a different lens and shutter:
- Krauss-Zeiss Lent-Protar; a separable lens with one half 35cm in length and the other 22cm, in the front and rear of a Compound shutter, giving a combined lens of 13.5cm (rather wide, if it covers the format; 22cm is neatly the format diagonal).[2]
- Farber's f/8 Rapid Aplanat (a Rapid Rectilinear type) in an unidentifiable shutter.[3]
- Laack Dialytar 155mm f/6.8 in a dial-set Compur shutter:[4].
The camera has a 'reversible' back: that is, it can be switched between horizontal and vertical orientation by detaching it. It has a key on each side of the body; these apparently allow the struts to be lengthened/shortened, to tilt the back relative to the bed. The front standard allows rise and cross movements.
Notes
- ↑ McKeown, James M. and Joan C. McKeown's Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras, 12th Edition, 2005-2006. USA, Centennial Photo Service, 2004. ISBN 0-931838-40-1 (hardcover). ISBN 0-931838-41-X (softcover). p1017.
- ↑ Excelsior with Krauss-Zeiss Lent-Protar lens, offered for sale at the 38th Leitz Photographica Auction, in June 2021.
- ↑ Excelsior with Farber's Rapid Aplanat, sold at the fifteenth Westlicht Auction, in May 2009.
- ↑ Excelsior with Dialytar, at Collection Appareils
