Sigriste
The Sigriste camera is a magazine camera for 6.5x9cm or 9x12cm plates, made in Paris about 1899.[1] It was designed by the Swiss Jean Guido Siegrist (1864-1915),[2] also known as Guido Sigriste,[3] known as a painter.[2] The manufacturing company appears properly to have been Société Anonyme des Appareils Photographiques à Rendement Maximum (Limited Company for Maximum-Yield Cameras) of 38 Bvd Victor Hugo in Neuilly-sur-Seine (central Paris), to whom enquiries about the camera are directed in an advertisement shown at Collection Appareils:[4] but the advertisement also uses the names Appareils Sigriste, known as Appareils SOL. The advertisement includes a logo with a face, presumably the sun-god, with the letters SOL around it, and 'SOL' is stamped into the wood and metal of the cameras.
The body of the camera tapers toward the front both vertically and horizontally, so that it forms a truncated square pyramid. The body of the camera is wooden, with leather covering on the sloping faces. The plate magazine, which holds twenty plates, fits to the back and has parallel sides. This has a drawer mechanism which, pulled out and pushed back in, moves the next plate into position, retensions the shutter and advances the plate counter in one action.[3] The heart of the design is a somewhat novel focal-plane shutter, comprising a metal-framed slit at the rear of the body, which runs vertically acoss the plate, in rails. Before the exposure, the slit sits at the bottom, beyond the edge of the plate. A cord connects the slit-frame to a pulley attached to a drum-spring mounted on the one of the faces of the body. A dial on the outside face of the drum allows both the shutter slit-width and spring tension to be adjusted separately, giving a range of shutter speeds. The face with the dial is nominally the bottom of the camera; there is a folding frame-finder mounted on the face opposite it. The patent notes that if the camera is operated upside-down, a different range of speeds is obtained, and states that the dial shows these in case they are wanted,[3] though it is not obvious that this is so in the example cited.
The robust metal slit-frame allows greater spring tension to be used than a cloth shutter would: the camera offers shutter speeds up to 1/2000 second[1] (the advertisement at Collection Appareils claims speeds between 1/40 and 1/5000 second,[4] but the example cited clearly only has speeds to 1/2000 second). A table on the plate magazine gives the speeds recommended to still the action of various kinds of subject: a horse at the trot, a steam-boat, a bicyclist, etc.
The camera has a bellows inside, connecting the rear of the lens-board to the plate in which the shutter-slit is set. This perhaps made it unnecessary for the shutter spring drum and its dial to be made light-tight.[3]
There was a stereo version of the camera.[5][6]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 9x12cm Sigriste camera with 150mm f/4.5 Krauss-Zeiss Tessar, offered but not sold at the 42nd Leitz Photographica Auction, in June 2023.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Painting, Napoleon Leading His Troops by Sigriste, at Christie's in March 2001.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 British Patent 12180 of 1899, Improvements in and Relating to Photographic Cameras, filed 10 June 1899 and granted 28 October 99, at Espacenet, the patent search facility of the European Patent Office.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Advertisement for Sigriste cameras, no earlier than 1900 (since it mentions a medal gained at the Paris Fair of that year), at Collection Appareils
- ↑ 6x13cm Sigriste Stereo camera with 8.5cm f/4.5 Voigtländer Heliar lenses, with a spare plate magazine, sold at the 35th Leitz Photographica Auction, in November 2019.
- ↑ 6x13cm Sigriste Stereo camera also with 8.5cm f/4.5 Heliar lenses, at Collection Appareils.
Links
- Other patents:
- Swiss Patent 18190, Chambre noir photographique, filed 17 November 1898 and granted 1 November 1899. A very short description of the camera with a single diagram.
- Swiss Patent 22184, Nouvel Appareil photographique avec obturateur à fente mobile (Novel camera with moving-slit shutter), filed 30 July 1900 and granted 31 December 1901. A much fuller description of the camera, with more diagrams, corresponding to the British patent cited above.
- British Patent 24567 of 1898, Improvements in Photographic Cameras, filed 21 November 1898 and granted 22 July 1899. A brief description, corresponding to the first Swiss patent.
- Les Fondamentaux, No. 72-73 Le Sigriste by Jean-Alain Chemille, 2020, Club Niépce Lumière. 66 page booklet available to buy; three sample pages shown.
