I did that with frosted drafting mylar, but it was the near shots that I could never get right using the inscribed lens scale. Beyond 10-12 feet worked good.
GeorgeBo wrote:
The history of these old cameras are just amazing and what they could do at the time with something we consider so basic.
When I reassembled this one, I was able to hold some ground glass to the back of the bellows where the film would be and did the focus "eye check". So it at least looked good on the glass. Will see
Also, I love that 6x9 shot you linked. The motion blur on the kids feet are perfect
James Markus wrote:
George, Can't wait to see your results. These folding cameras really are marvels. I had a Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 6x9cm that folded so flat it fit in my front shirt pocket, and it had a great lens 105mm Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. I pulled it out of the trash as a kid, and fixed the bellows light leak. Hardest part for me was getting good focus. When I disassembled the lens/shutter to clean it - I was never sure if the front element was screwed on the correct number of turns during reassembly. Pretty sure it was 4.5 turns, but things like what side of the set screw/stop to markings - where and in what position did you start threading the front element back on - taught me to be very careful during disassembly. Focusing by windage is frustrating, because the lens barrel markings never seem to be accurate. (I had a handful of folding cameras - Kodak Retina IIIc, Agfa Isolette, and others) The 127 (4.6 x 6cm) film format was very popular even through the 1950s. My mom had multiple Bake-o-lite Kodak 127 Brownies from the late 1930s-mid 1940s) I had a client bring me glass 4x5 negatives in a wooden box that the camera that took them had been shipped. I asked to see the camera, and it was a box camera from 1895 the held 10 plates. It had an ingenious lever that flipped the exposed plate to the back while simultaneously loading an unexposed glass plate. It had a thin metal shutter that flipped over either a tiny lens or a hole in the box (the hole was less than 0.125"), but it took great sharp photos. Imagine going from roughly a shoe box sized camera to a folding camera - it was revolutionary. A link to the results from my 6x9 below
