This is the Ica model
#1! It is a bare bones dirt-cheap box-type entry level camera for the format
of 4.5x6cm, vertically oriented, a format considered "miniature" in this
time. Still, it was three times larger than our "modern" 35mm film format!
The camera was made of thin steel sheet. The optics is only identified
as a "good landscape lens", which means that it was too unsharp to allow
recognizing a person on the photo! Probably it was nothing more than a
single, uncorrected planoconvex lens. The shutter was capable of time exposure
in addition to normal mode. Despite costing only 4 Reichsmark, cheap enough
to give this camera to your son for Christmas, it did have some finesse:
It could be loaded with six photographic plates, and advanced them automatically
after each shot!
Adding another 4.5
Reichsmark, you could instead get this complete kit, an ideal gift for
an aspiring photographer. It included the complete camera, 12 plates, 10
sheets of copying paper (they assumed you would mess up at least two of
the plates!), 10 carton frames, and all chemicals and tools needed to develop
the plates and make the contact copies!
At product #40,
we find a very different camera for the same "miniature" format! It features
quality brass construction covered in real leather, an adjustable shutter
that can go up to 1/250th of a second, an adjustable aperture, and some
other goodies. It could load 12 normal plates, or 8 Autochrome plates (which
were thicker).
But this is the
lower half of that catalog page: The price list. Depending on which lens
you ordered with the camera, it cost between 120 and 210 Reichsmark! Compare
that to the 4 Reichsmark of the entry-level model!
Most Ica cameras were available with a choice of lenses. Usually the cheapest were those produced in-house, which were available in different qualities and apertures. The most expensive ones invariable were the fastest Zeiss lenses. They were the best - and still are today! All lenses listed here are of the same focal length, 7.5cm. Only the quality and aperture were different.
For many models of cameras, Ica was willing to adapt a lens provided
by the customer. So, if you had a worn camera with an exceptionally good
lens, you could send that lens in and get the new camera of your dreams
fitted with it!
The bellows could be extended to 39 cm. The lenses (there was a wide range of qualities and apertures to choose from) could be used complete, giving about 19cm focal length, which was pretty much a normal lens for this format of 9x12cm. But they could also be disassembled, and only the rear lens would be used, while extending the bellows. This gave a tele lens of roughly 32 cm focal length!
Depending on the choice of lens and shutter (yes, there were two versions
of shutter!), this jewel of a camera would have set you back by 305 to
530 Reichsmark! If that was too much for you, then you could still choose
among another few hundred camera models, in all price ranges, from Ica's
catalog!
Stereo cameras were
very fashionable in 1913. Ica made a large range of them, for many different
formats, with a lot of variation in features and cost. Most of these stereo
cameras had two lenses, while the cheapest had only one, that could be
displaced to make first one, then the other half of the stereo shot. But
this model had three lenses! It could be used as a stereo camera,
employing the two side lenses, or as a panoramic camera, using the center
lens! And you thought that APS with its in-camera selection of several
formats, including a panoramic one, was revolutionary? Think again!
This camera had in fact four modes: Stereo, using the side lenses; panoramic, using the center lens; wide angle panoramic, by displacing the entire front section to one side and using only one of the side lenses; and tele-panoramic, same as before but using only the rear element of one side lens!
Depending on the lenses fitted, the prices for this camera ranged from
380 to 585 Reichsmark.
The camera had a wide range of bellows extension, allowing the use of
lenses of many different focal lengths, and was sturdy enough to use even
the fastest lenses, according to this ad. Fast lenses are less tolerant
of crooked mounting. The camera allows all kinds of swiveling, so it could
be set up to compensate for converging lines and such - but then, almost
all bellows cameras could do that! This is one feature we have lost in
modern photography. Having no bellows, the ability to displace the lens,
even a few mm, nowadays costs enormous sums of money in special shift/tilt
lenses!
What do
you consider to be "large format" in photography? Maybe 20x25cm, or so?
Well, in 1913 photographers had a different idea. These cameras were available in seven different formats, ranging from 24x30cm to a whopping 80x100cm! The largest of these babies had a bellows that extended up to two and a half meters! The largest model had a price tag of 1640 Reichsmark, including the wheeled desk, but not including a lens. A house probably cost less!
The ad says that these cameras are "an adornment of any photographic
studio"! I believe that - in any case, they must have been more of an adornment
than of a useful tool! What do you do with a negative on a glass plate
measuring 80x100cm? Back then, even living-room windows were smaller! :-)
Are you
among the many photographers who believe that single-lens reflex cameras
were invented in the 1950s or so? Then it would be good to have a look
at the Ica Reflex of 1913. It came in six different sizes, for plate formats
of 6x9 to 13x18cm. And it was not advertised as anything new! Ica must
have been producing SLR cameras for some time already. At least, the Reflex
was advertised as an "artist's camera".
This camera was not at all unlike a modern SLR! It featured a focal plane slit shutter with stepless exposure time adjustment right to 1/1000th of a second! The exposure mechanism and mirror were brought in position by a half turn of the winding knob - just like modern hand-wound SLRs!
When looking at this picture, and reading the specs, I can't help being reminded of a relatively modern Bronica 6x6cm SLR I used some time ago. The Bronica had an external bellows attachment instead of the old Ica's built-in one. The Bronica had backs for 120-size film, shooting 12 exposures, while the Ica had backs for plates - for 12 exposures too! Viewfinder, operation, technology were all pretty much the same, despite the 70 year interval between them!
Fitted with a set of Zeiss Tessar 1:4.5 lenses, this camera was as capable
of producing high quality photographs as the most modern medium or large
format SLR cameras!