Vom Fels Zum Meer
The Vom Fels Zum Meer ('From the Rocks to the Sea'[1]) is a wooden-bodied detective camera for 9x12cm plates in double dark-slides, made by (or perhaps made for) Hoerth, Daeschner & Company of Karlsruhe, Germany in about 1896.[2][3] It is the only camera the company is known for.
It is essentially a sliding-box camera; two half-boxes, one inside the other. The body is of workmanlike construction, without fancy dovetail joints or leather covering. The inner box pulls out at the rear to focus. This rear box of the camera has a ground-glass screen, exchangeable with a dark-slide. A brass strip, engraved with distances down to one metre, serves as the focus scale; attached to the rear box, with a pointer on the front, outer box. There are also Watson-type finders for horizontal and vertical orientation.
An example seen at Westlicht has an unmarked lens, mounted in a shutter by Linhof, with an M/Z ('I' and 'B') control and six tension settings.
Notes
- ↑ The name is a motto associated with the Hohenzollern royal house.
- ↑ Vom Fels Zum Meer camera, sold at the 29th Westlicht Photographica Auction, in November 2016.
- ↑ The company address is given as Kaiserstrasse 140, Karlsruhe, in a list of photographic suppliers in Compendium der Practischen Photographie, Prof. F. Schmidt, 1898. Verlag Otto Nemnich. Collection of the Brigham Young University, archived at Internet Archive.
