Gallus Derby-Lux
France ~1941
Boyer Saphir lens f=50, 1:3,5
Focal Plane shutter, self-capping cloth curtains, shutter seeds range 1/25-1/500, B.
The shutter is cocked by turning the shutter speed selector.
16, 4x3cm exposures on 127 film, the film advance is controlled, by two little windows on the back, with a sliding device to cover them with a red or green gel, for orthochromatic or panchromatic film.
The focusing is achieved by means of an helical that displaces the front element of the lens.
The body is made of an aluminium alloy, without any covering. The bellows is made of leather.
This camera is so beautiful that two of the pictures that I uploaded to Flickr made Explore:
This was made in the occupied France, during WWII, it's a copy of the German Foth Derby.
I found this camera in a flea-market. I had already some nice finds in my bag when I saw this one. It was a mess, dirty, with obvious signs of attempts to repair...
I wasn't familiar with the brand. The seller asked me 25€ and I passed.
When I got home, started digging information about it.
What I found gave me the urge of rip my hair, if I had any to rip.
You can imagine, next week I was there at eight o'clock, in the morning. I went to the seller, my heart almost stopped, when I saw it standing there. Casually I asked the seller, how much he wanted for it. This time he didn't ask for 25€, but only 15. I tried to take it for 10 but he didn't gave. So 15 it was.
But look what I took home:
Here you can read about it's restoration, and here how I made it anew set of shutter curtains.
Some pictures taken with it:
Stay tuned (o;
