Précidès
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| Précidès image by Bernard Faure (Image rights) |
The Précidès is a metal-bodied box camera for 6x9 cm pictures[1] on 620 roll film, from about 1950.[2] Collection Appareils attributes the camera to a company named MAPED, of Annecy in the Haute-Savoie departement of France, near Geneva, suggesting that the camera's name is a contraction of 'Précision' and 'Dessin' from that company's full name.[3]
It has an 'I' and 'B' shutter, selected by the left-hand control (the user's left) of the two below the lens, and released by the button at the bottom right. The other control selects between two aperture stops.[3] It has a reverse-Galilean viewfinder on the right side (the notes at Collection Appareils comment that the camera itself blocks more than half of the view in the finder[3]) and a plastic strap handle on the top. The film is advanced with a winding knob and red window.
Both Collection Appareils and McKeown show both the standard camera, and one apparently made as a promotional item for Lanvin chocolates;[2][4] this has a plate above the lens reading 'LANVIN' (and in McKeown's example, the handle is mounted the other way around, with the loop at the front); otherwise it is identical to the standard camera.
The camera was also sold as the Menetrel.[2]
Notes
- ↑ This appears to be the format; neither McKeown nor Collection Appareils give it, but it must surely be rectangular, from the shape of the viewfinder.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 McKeown lists the camera (under its own name, not that of a company) and dates the Lanvin version to 1951; 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). p802.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Précidès at Sylvain Halgand's Collection Appareils; the standard model of the camera (an example apparently given away in a promotion by Les Biscuits Nantes), together with the microscope also made by the MAPED company.
- ↑ Précidès 'Lanvin' at Collection Appareils.
