Limit
The Limit is a camera for 4.5x6cm plates or film-packs, made by Thornton-Pickard in about 1912. It has a metal body, part painted black and part nickel-plated.[1][2] It has a collapsing lens-tube so that, when folded, the camera is a flat metal box, easy to stow away. It has a focal-plane shutter, but this offers only 'I' and 'T' settings (described as 'T', but 'B' shutter seems more likely). There is a Newton finder ono one end of the front, which swivels up for use. There is a folding foot, which allows the camera to sit upright in vertical orientation on a table.
The camera was advertised in the British Journal Almanac of 1913 with one of three lenses:[3]
- A Thornton-Pickard achromat (price 35 shillings), probably an f/11 lens.[2]
- A Thornton-Pickard Pantoplanat (price 45 shillings); the Pantoplanat is listed on its own in the cited advertisement as an f/8 Rapid Rectilinear type.
- An f/6.5 Cooke Series III anastigmat (price 110 shillings - 5 pounds 10 shillings) with an iris diaphragm.[1]
A 'Limit' enlarging box was also offered, to make postcard-sized prints from the vest-pocket negatives.[3]
The camera is described in British Patent 12607, filed in 1911.[4] This describes three features:
- The lens-tube collapsing in sections into the camera body, for compactness, which the patent acknowledges is not new.
- A 'key' (a machined ridge) in the collapsing sections that prevents them from rotating relative to each other; they pull out without turning.
- A mechanism that stops the shutter being released when the camera is collapsed (but this only applies to an alternative version of the camera, with a leaf shutter mounted in the lens tube; the Snappa has this feature, in a more simply-built camera).
The Limit is a very poor cousin to the strut-folding Minim, which follows it in the same advertisement, with better lenses and a range of shutter speeds.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Limit with the f/6.5 Cooke Series III anastigmat, sold by Christie's in December 2002. It is listed as 6x9cm size by mistake.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Limit with one of the cheaper lenses, probably the achromat, sold by Christie's in November 2004.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Thornton-Pickard advertisements in the British Journal Almanac for 1913, reproduced at Pacifica Rim Camera. The Limit is on p210-211 of the Almanac (p24-5 of the document as reproduced).
- ↑ British Patent 12607 of 1911, Improvements in Photographic Cameras and Lenses therefor, filed May 1911 and granted May 1912 to the Thornton-Pickard company, Arthur Gray Pickard and Richard Hesketh, including the provisional specification of patent application 28186 of November 1911. The patent describes a camera with the lens on a collapsible lens tube in two or more sections. Diagrams show the camera with either a focal-plane roller shutter as in the Limit, or a two-leaf shutter at the back of the lens. In the latter case, a pin projecting from the shutter mechanism engages with the shutter-release lever when the lens-tube is extended. At Espacenet, the patent search facility of the European Patent Office.
