No. 3 Eastman Plate Series C camera

I received a question about the No. 3 Eastman Plate Series C cameras and here is what I could find.
It is a folding camera for 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inch glass plates and was produced from 1902 to 1904. The camera could also be fitted with a Cartridge Roll Holder to take pics on roll film.
There also is a series D, which has an extra long bellows extension. 1600 cameras were made in each series. Serial numbers start with 501.
See the HCCC site for a description of the model.

The camera is a typical apparatus for the 'serious amateur', the man or woman who wanted to make perfect pictures, not snapshots. The Eastman Plate cameras are well equiped for this. The picture could be focused and composed on the ground glass, which was more accurate than a little reflex finder and distance scale, and the lens panel could be moved up and down and sideways. For an explanation on this, with videos, see this page on my website.

One was sold on Ebay in June, fetching US$ 420. I do not know its condition.

Photographica fair in Houten (NL) & Google Books

Today is the traditional November photographica fair in Houten in the Netherlands. I can't give you an impression, I can't take a snap with my phone and show it here. I'm not there. I used to go in the 1980's and 1990's. For weeks I looked forward to it. It was a bit like Santaclaus of my youth. But gradually the antique cameras and other stuff disappeared. They were replaced with 'modern' cameras and accesories from the 1960, '70 and '80. I read in society journal PHT that it is getting worse every year, with second hand radios and such things. It is no fun anymore and that is why I am not there now.

Enough grumbling for today. Here's some positive news. I discovered that I can make my own library in GoogleBooks. The only thing you have to do is search for the title and click a button to add it to your library. You even can make different 'bookshelfs'. What is best: you can search your library full text (!!!!). You can find every word in all the books you have. Wow!
Click the link on the right to go to my Google Library. There are 56 books at the moment, but more will be added.

eBay watch

What happened to the items I mentioned before? The Pascal box with motor drive wasn't sold for the € 900 asking price and is now relisted at € 500. Quite a difference. Let's see what is going to happen.

The No. 4 Folding Kodet Special went for $ 52. Not much, but it is a real restauration project. The fine and early red Pocket Kodak was sold for almost $ 230. Nine bidders were in the race for it.

Then there was the No. 4 Eureka box. It went for almost $ 170.

New on eBay is a Vest Pocket Monroe from around 1900. It's a compact camera for plates with red bellows and brass struts. Price now is $ 25. I wonder what it will do. Still 4 days to go.

Also new are a couple of detective cameras. Interesting is the no name box on the left. Starting price $ 600, no bids yet. On the right is a Tisdell box. already 5 bids now, price at $ 285, and 4 days until the end.

Addition to my collection & other things

The Stereo Brownie and Stereo Kodak Model 1 in the pic are part of my collection since many years. New is the specimen photo that is made with a No. 2 Stereo Brownie. In 2D it is a bit of a dull picture of two people standing on a rustic bridge in a forest. In 3D it comes to life in a wonderful way.
Besides early Kodak cameras I collect their instruction booklets and photos made with the cameras. The specimen photo is the latest addition to my collection.

eBay watch: there's a Pascal box camera for sale. It is the first camera with automatic film advance, dating from around 1899. Starting price is € 900. No bids yet. I wonder what it will do. In Photographica World 2010 no. 1 is an article about motordrive cameras. Le Pascal is one of the cameras described.

Sad news is that my mother probably has to move to a service appartment. She lives in a rather big house now, with lots of room for the stuff of her children. I will have to find a new home for a very fine Durst M605 black&white enlarger with Componon S lens. I haven't used it for 15 years. Also I will have to find a place for a scale model of a 1870s daylight photographers studio which I have made in the late 1980s. I have no room for it in my private museum, but I also don't want to sell it.

No. 4 Folding Kodet Special

There's a No. 4 Folding Kodet Special for sale at eBay. Lens is missing, as are the 2 doors. Leather is in bad condition. Two bids at the moment, highest bid is now $ 52. Still 5 days to go. A nice restauration project. If someone knows where to get the right leather, please let me know. I've got a No. 4 Folding Kodet Junior that could use some.

eBay watch

What happened to the items in my previous blog? The Kamaret is not for sale anymore. The auction ended after an offer was declined by the seller. Will we see the Kamaret again in some time?
The Eastman View camera sold for US$ 1675 after 6 serious bidders had battled for it. A nice price, I think, for a camera with no lens and a replacement lensboard.
The No. 4 Eureka in fine condition ended at US$ 168. Not really a high price, but like I said before, it's a camera for a limited group of collectors. I'm sure it is a fine addition to the collection of the new owner.
The set of 26 photos made by a No. 2 camera went for US$ 50. There was 1 bidder.
My favorite BLAIR FOCUSING WENO HAWK-EYE NO. 4 CAMERA is still there. No bids yet, no offers made. Is the $ 500 price way out of line? I have no idea.
The No. 4 Folding Kodak with Asbury Barker shutter ended at US$ 1195. Five bidders had been playing around at $ 500 when a sixth one took it away for the Buy it now price.
The naked No. 4 Folding Kodet found a new owner for US$ 181. I hope it gets restored properly now.

Any new interesting items on eBay now? Yep, a real nice red Pocket Kodak with battered leather case. At the moment 3 bidders are skirmishing over it. Highest bid now is a meagre $ 31.50. Still five days to go.

The model has the Tisdell shutter attached to the lensboard, indicating it is the 4th version of the 1895 model. But is also has the felt film guides, which belong to the earlier versions. Ralph London explaines in his article The Pocket Kodak (in The Photographist, nr 100, Winter 1993/1994) that the version with attached shutter & felt guides could well be the absolute first version of the '95 model. Meaning that this example on eBay is a very fine specimen of the very first Pocket Kodak version.

eBay watch

No busty ladies here, sorry, only old cameras. The Kamaret I mentioned earlier is still for sale. Price dropped to US$ 439. It is a historical interesting camera since it was (one of??) the first to use film spools in front of the film plane, the so called front roll design.
There's also a giant Eastman Dry Plate & Film Co. view camera from the years before the Kodak. It's a 18 x 22 inch machine. At the moment it has 4 bids and the price is $ 565. Still 4 days to go.
More humble is the No. 4 Eureka Kodak, a shoe box type camera for the specialised Kodak collector who wants to have all the models. The camera is not so often seen. This one is in fine condition and has the ground glass and two plate holders. Starting price $ 150, 3 days to go and no bids yet.

In the photo section there is a set of 26 mounted Kodak photos in the No. 2 size (3" x 3"). They date from the period 1896-1900. A nice addition to any No. 2 Bulls-eye, Bullet, Falcon or Flexo.

My favorite I have saved for the last. It's no Kodak, no, it's a Blair Focusing Weno Hawk eye No. 4. With this camera you could focus on a ground glass and still take your photos of a roll of film, like with the Screen Focus Kodak. It is a beauty and I want it, but I have to be strong and let it pass. I am a collector of early Kodaks, at least until I have them all. Then, and only then, I will go for the other beauties.

Asbury Barker shutter

I can't find much about the Asbury Barker shutter. There are two Asbury Barker patents on pneumatic shutters in Google patents. See patent 477588 and 491794. According to "A century of cameras" by Eaton Lothrop the Barker shutter is a between the lens, two-blade scissors  type. The 477588 patent shows such a shutter. If not the same, I think this shutter in the patent is closely related to the one on the Folding Kodak.

The 1892 Kodak catalog mentions the shutter. You can download the catalog as a PDF from Charlie Kamerman's site. Below is the piece about the shutter.

Satchel Kodak with Barker shutter

Again there's an interesting early Kodak for sale on eBay. This time it is a 1892 No. 4 Folding Kodak with a rare Asbury Barker shutter. Because this shutter didn't work well, it was often replaced by another model. Therefore examples with an original Barker shutter are quite rare today. In total there were only 3750 No. 4 Folding Kodaks produced. Buy it now price is US$ 1195. Better hurry before I change my mind and buy it myself.

Article index & rare Kodet camera

My index of 2500 photohistory articles and patents is working again, not with the old DOS program, but with Excel. The Excel filtering options work well and I can search on every word and combine searches using logical (Boolean) operators. So, now I could start indexing the pile of journals that I haven't indexed yet. I could... but I think they will have to wait a little longer. Indexing journals is not really a job I like.
Enough about that.

There's a interesting camera for sale on eBay: a No. 4 Folding Kodet (vertical model) from around 1895. Alas it is 'restored' and now it really needs retoration. All the leather is stripped off and the wood is lacquered. The complete camera is mounted on a brass plate. Awful! But if you can find the right leather it is a rewarding job. The camera is worth the trouble, as it is not seen often.