Post by gray1720 on Sept 3, 2024 7:40:27 GMT
Posted as a comparison with the post-war Six-20 Folding Brownies in this thread:
snappers-social-club.proboards.com/thread/993/end-identical-kodaks
Six-20 "Kodak" Junior open by gray1720, on Flickr
Six-20 "Kodak" Junior closed by gray1720, on Flickr (need to work on my lighting! I have time right now...)
This is virtually the same camera as the post-war one above - the body and struts are almost identical, slightly different leatherette covering, it's just fittings like knobs that differ and, of course, the shutter and lens, and the fitting for the brilliant finder is missing from the later model. Anyone interested in Kodaks of this vintage will realise very, very quickly that there was no such thing as standardisation at Kodak in the 1930s - I have a circa 1930 catalogue that lists everything with a bewildering number of options for shutters and lenses for every model, and somewhere around 30 different film sizes - can't remember whether that includes pack film or not. So it seems strange that a pre-war model should be resurrected in 1948. I suspect it was for reasons of cost - maybe all the dies were still in the factory? Or there was a bunker full of unfinished parts? - as Britain was virtually bankrupt post-WW2.
Instead of the plain fronted Dakon shutter, this has a Kodon with an awe-inspiring three speeds plus B & T but what's nice is that it has a rather lovely black and silver front plate. It's not particularly Art Deco, unlike some of its contemporaries, but the simplicity makes it stand out. I think it's very pretty. It's also got a three-element Kodak Anastigmat lens that focuses, with a neat click-stop arrangement where the indicator is V-shaped and engages in notches in a ring behind the moving front element. Not sure how useful it is as I've never seen another but it's an interesting thing.
The brilliant finder was almost opaque when I got it - unfortunately the camera has been damp at some point so I've had to do things like polish out rust in the film gate - but the top is only held on with a single tiny screw and when I took that out and cleaned it I found that the mirror is a piece of plated metal, and it was perfect under the crud. Now I have the brightest brilliant finder of any of my cameras by a country mile. Luckily the lens seems to have escaped internal crud, it just needed the usual many decades of grot removing from the external surfaces. I've tested the bellows with a flash and they look light-tight - so this has a film in right now and will be heading for Salisbury (it's got a big spire) on Saturday.
snappers-social-club.proboards.com/thread/993/end-identical-kodaks
Six-20 "Kodak" Junior open by gray1720, on FlickrSix-20 "Kodak" Junior closed by gray1720, on Flickr (need to work on my lighting! I have time right now...)This is virtually the same camera as the post-war one above - the body and struts are almost identical, slightly different leatherette covering, it's just fittings like knobs that differ and, of course, the shutter and lens, and the fitting for the brilliant finder is missing from the later model. Anyone interested in Kodaks of this vintage will realise very, very quickly that there was no such thing as standardisation at Kodak in the 1930s - I have a circa 1930 catalogue that lists everything with a bewildering number of options for shutters and lenses for every model, and somewhere around 30 different film sizes - can't remember whether that includes pack film or not. So it seems strange that a pre-war model should be resurrected in 1948. I suspect it was for reasons of cost - maybe all the dies were still in the factory? Or there was a bunker full of unfinished parts? - as Britain was virtually bankrupt post-WW2.
Instead of the plain fronted Dakon shutter, this has a Kodon with an awe-inspiring three speeds plus B & T but what's nice is that it has a rather lovely black and silver front plate. It's not particularly Art Deco, unlike some of its contemporaries, but the simplicity makes it stand out. I think it's very pretty. It's also got a three-element Kodak Anastigmat lens that focuses, with a neat click-stop arrangement where the indicator is V-shaped and engages in notches in a ring behind the moving front element. Not sure how useful it is as I've never seen another but it's an interesting thing.
The brilliant finder was almost opaque when I got it - unfortunately the camera has been damp at some point so I've had to do things like polish out rust in the film gate - but the top is only held on with a single tiny screw and when I took that out and cleaned it I found that the mirror is a piece of plated metal, and it was perfect under the crud. Now I have the brightest brilliant finder of any of my cameras by a country mile. Luckily the lens seems to have escaped internal crud, it just needed the usual many decades of grot removing from the external surfaces. I've tested the bellows with a flash and they look light-tight - so this has a film in right now and will be heading for Salisbury (it's got a big spire) on Saturday.
