The Zeiss Ikon Nettel Deckrullo plate camera is on the Zeiss Ikon page. Early Brass and mahogany plate cameras are on the Brass and Mahogany page. Find these pages by going to My Cameras.

LATE cameras came before roll film cameras, and models for amateur photographers continued to be made right through to the end of the 1930s though in fewer numbers. They continued after the war mainly for press and studio use and many studios specialising in product advertisement shots still use monorail plate cameras but use them with cut film.
      Glass plates continued to be made for a time though most press men had switched to roll film or 35mm by the end of the 1950s, and most studios changed to using cut film. The big disadvantage of a plate camera from the amateur’s point of view was the necessity to carry about a number of dark slides ready loaded with glass plates as well as the camera, which made the camera bag rather heavy. Glass plates were also fragile and easily broken which made storage of negatives something of a problem, and the dark slides had to be loaded and unloaded in a darkroom.
      Many amateurs however, hung on to their plate cameras, particularly in the larger sizes which often had movements such as rise and fall, swings and tilts because of their versatility, though many changed to using cut film instead of glass plates. For more about using movements have a look at Scheimpflug in my Camera chit-chat page.
      The smaller sizes, 9x12 cm and 6x9 cm

Pictures to come

weren’t so versatile. At the most they had rise and fall for the fixed lens and shutter. Film pack adaptors and roll film adapters enjoyed a certain popularity for the advantage they gave of not having to carry dark slides around and change them between shots. In the amateur photo magazines there were features about the pros and cons of using film or plates, and in the readers’ letters sections arguments sometimes got quite heated.
      By the end of the 1930s plate cameras were just about dead except for professional use. Few collectors today use their plate cameras because glass plates are no longer available and cut film is increasingly hard to find. You can, however, use them by putting bromide paper in a cut film holder or, with suitable packing, in a plate holder and rating it at about 8 to 10 ASA, or ISO if you prefer. This can be developed as a print, scanned into a computer and then inverted to give a positive.

I AM a little puzzled about the exact identification of this camera. It’s a basic drop-front, single extension folding design typical of numerous German cameras of the 1920s, taking 9cm by 12cm plates. The lens panel is carried on a U-shaped bracket with provision for a rising front, also typical of this type of camera.
     So far, so good. The description agrees with the very brief mention in McKeown’s Guide. It also agrees with the description in D. B. Tubbs’ book on Zeiss Ikon Cameras. Zeiss Ikon carried on the Taxo after Contessa Nettel was absorbed into the company in the big 1926 amalgamation, and kept it in production till 1931.
     Now we come to the differences. First, the position of the brilliant viewfinder. The camera isn’t illustrated in McKeown’s, but the picture in D.B. Tubbs’ book shows the viewfinder mounted centrally above the lens. On the Taxo I’ve got, it’s mounted to one side, on the right as you look at the front of the camera, or left when you look into it in the taking position. I suppose it’s possible that the Contessa-Nettel Taxos had the viewfinder to one side, and the Zeiss Ikon Taxos used a ‘group’ lens panel with the viewfinder centrally above the lens
     Not a lot to worry about, but then we come to the lens. McKeown mentions just an Extra-Rapid Aplanat, but Tubbs gives it as a Novar, which it probably was after the amalgamation. My Taxo’s got neither. The lens is labelled Contessa-Nettel Doppel Anastigmat Citonar, and the apertures run 6.3, 8, 12.5, 18, 25 and 36.
     This is where I move into detective work, or guesswork, whichever you like to call it. The Doppel Anastigmat, or Double Anastigmat, was originally a Goerz design or rather, according to Dr. A. Neill Wright’s excellent and exhaustive Lens Collector’s Vade Mecum, it was designed by Emil von Hoegh who offered the design to Goerz for manufacture. The Vade Mecum also mentions the Citonar as being a Contessa-Nettel lens, but gives no details, and states that it is not known if the lens was made in-house or bought-in.
     Goerz made lenses for quite a number of camera makers, or licensed its designs. Both Goerz and Contessa-Nettel, together with Ernemann and ICA, formed an association in 1925, and came under the Zeiss umbrella in September 1926 to form Zeiss Ikon. So maybe the Citonar Doppel Anastigmat was made by Goerz for Contessa-Nettel before 1926. I can’t find the Citonar mentioned anywhere after 1926. It seems to have been dropped after the Zeiss Ikon amalgamation when the Goerz optical works at Zehlendorf became Zeiss Ikon Werke Berlin Zehlendorf. Lens production was almost completely shut down with only Frontars and, according to some reports, a few Novars, being made.
OK, so it’s not of world shaking importance, but I like digging into little details like this about cameras in my collection. It’s more interesting than just acquiring them and sticking them in a cabinet or on a shelf.
     With regard to the other features on the camera, it’s definitely a Contessa-Nettel Taxo, and not a Zeiss Ikon Taxo because it’s got Contessa Nettel embossed on the leather covering of the door which covers the focusing screen at the back. The name’s also in quite large raised letters inside the drop-down front together with the combined CN Contessa-Nettel logo.
     The shutter is a Derval (not a Duvall as given in my copy of McKeown’s, but that may be a misprint). It has the AGC logo on the front which shows it was made by Alfred Gauthier, Calmbach, the firm that made Vario, Pronto and Prontor shutters among others. The speeds of 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 sec, plus B and T are set by a dial at the top. It’s an ‘everset’ type, so you don’t have to cock it. As with many everset shutters I’ve come across, it still works positively with no sign of hesitation, probably because there aren’t any gears to get sticky.
     If you want to use the focusing screen you obviously have the camera on a tripod, but if you want to use it as a hand camera, either for plates or with a roll-film adaptor back, you have focus and compose the picture some other way, hence the brilliant viewfinder. This is the largest and best brilliant viewfinder I’ve come across with the exception of the big built-in one on the Ensign Full-Vue and similar box-type cameras, and a few would-be twin lens reflexes. It’s the usual two lenses and 45-degree mirror arrangement but, as with a number of other brilliant finders I’ve come across, the sides are open so that daylight can get in. This means that the mirror easily gets covered in dust, but the light doesn’t appear to dim the contrast, and you wouldn’t have much excuse for chopping off anyone’s head or feet. The focusing scale on the baseboard is in feet, not metres, so it was an export camera, probably for the UK market.
     I picked it up In a general secondhand dealer’s shop some years ago. Because it takes plates and not films, neither he nor the general public were very interested in it. It was in good condition considering its age, anything from 75 to 80 years old. The leather carrying handle at the top showed signs of quite heavy use, with the black surface rubbed down to the brown leather, but that responded to treatment. There was a small piece of leather needed gluing down on the back focusing door, but apart from that the rest of the body covering’s fine.
     Mechanically, I had to very little to do, mainly tightening the viewfinder. When I got it, the viewfinder flopped about because the screw on which it pivots for portrait or landscape pictures was loose. Unfortunately, the panel had also stripped its thread so it doesn’t tighten properly, and I haven’t found a suitable replacement nut and bolt though I must admit I haven’t tried beyond my spares box. With a couple of washers it’s better than it was, but the viewfinder still looks a bit drunk. The screw for locking the rising front is missing, so I’m looking out for a suitable screw with a big knurled head to replace it.
     As with many low-price folding cameras of its time, the drop front doesn’t lock down exactly at right angles to the back, so the lens standard is leaning very slightly backwards even though there’s little or no play in the sliding runners. This would be disastrous with a wide aperture lens, but with a maximum aperture of f/6.3 there’s probably enough depth of back focus for it not to matter overmuch.
     I haven’t taken any pictures with the Taxo because I haven’t got any 9cm by 12cm plates or cut film except some very ancient plates, probably from the 1930s, that are still sealed in their package. I doubt they’d be any use now, so I’m not inclined to open the packet. I could use bromide paper, but I no longer have a darkroom in which to develop it, and it's nor something you can do in a changing bag.

THIS is a died-in-the-wool, campaign-hardened and battered old workhorse. VN Press cameras were made in London, and it’s been said, probably with a lot of truth, that very few VN Press cameras were the same. Van Neck, from whom the VN name came, was a highly individualistic camera maker who worked in London in the 1930s and probably to some time in the 1950s, and who believed in giving his customers, mainly press photographers, exactly what they wanted. If they had a favourite lens, he would mount it on the camera and make a focusing scale for it. If they wanted the shutter synchronised for flash, he would put in synch contacts. If they wanted a bracket to hang a rangefinder on, he would make a bracket. Anything within reason, and Van Neck would make it or adapt it.
     He had a basic Press camera available in either 5in by 4in or 9cm by 12cm sizes that in itself was something of an anachronism, or perhaps dinosaur that refused to die would be a better description. It was a lazy-tongs plate camera with a focal plane shutter, and in design features it went back to somewhere around the First World War period. The shutter wasn’t self-capping (who needed self-capping when you had a darkslide in the plate holder?), and you had to make three settings to change the shutter speed. These were the speed itself, the blind tension and a ‘setting number’ to adjust the blind slit width..
     How, then, did Van Neck survive for so long with such outdated cameras? Well, press photographers have always regarded their cameras as tools of the trade, not male jewellery, nor objects of desire to be displayed and pampered. As a writer I worked alongside them in the 1960s and saw them in action. The camera had to work hard in all weathers, under all conditions. Rain, snow, dust, smoke, grit or sand – it didn’t matter. It had to survive knocks, bangs and occasionally being dropped. And, above all, it had to keep working. Nothing else mattered except the picture. Failing to get the picture was a cardinal sin.
     The main attribute of the VN Press camera was that it would put up with almost anything, and keep on working. Press photographers of those days, as indeed now, were fiercely professional. They set the shutter speed in advance according to the job they had to do, looked at the sky and the light, and made adjustments to the aperture to suit. They shunned things like rangefinders and exposure meters as time-wasting accessories if a picture suddenly presented itself. They relied on judgement backed by experience, they could judge distances to within a foot, they glanced at the light and set the lens aperture and they prided themselves that every shot was in focus and printable. They worked with large format glass plates because that’s what the newspaper darkrooms of the time – basically still pre-war in set-up – demanded, and there wasn't time to change plates and bracket exposures.
     Those press photographers of yesteryear are almost a forgotten breed, and their cameras with them. They were slowly pushed aside at the end of the 1950s by a new breed of equally professional photographers, but carrying a pair of Nikons or Canons, equally as reliable as the older press cameras, and so much easier to use.
     My VN Press is a 9cm by 12cm model and came to me from a retired press photographer. It’s fitted with a 6in (roughly 152mm) f/4.5 uncoated Ross Xpres lens in a lever-operated helical focusing mount which is scaled from 2 to infinity in yards, not feet, in a quickly detachable lens panel. I’m unsure about the date, but guess it to be the late 1940s. There’s a quick-opening door at the back to change the plate holders in a hurry, and an open-frame wire viewfinder.
     You wind up the shutter by a big knob at the side. It makes a noise like a mangle when you wind it up, but it fires quite smoothly even now on all its speeds from 1/10 to 1/1000 sec. The camera’s seen a hard life, and there are various holes in the body where the owner screwed on things like a massive bulb flash gun and, so he told me, a baby umbrella to keep the camera dry in the rain, and act as a lens shade in bright sunlight.
     I haven’t attempted to restore it, just given it a good clean, treated the leather bellows with hide food and put it on the shelf in peaceful retirement with its honourable battle scars.

THE Avus plate camera was aimed at the more ‘serious’ amateur photographer not the snapshotter. It was first made in 9 by 12cm size just after the end of World War I, joined by a 6.5 by 9cm version about 1927. The larger size was dropped about 1934, but the smaller one, the one I have, carried on till about 1936.
     It has an aluminium body covered in black leather, with the usual drop-down front. The lens standard slides forward on rails that are more substantial than those on many folding cameras, and the rails extend with a rack and pinion to give double extension. At full stretch it will almost, but not quite, manage a 1 to 1 picture. You can focus by ground glass screen or, for hand shots there’s an open frame wire finder with a metal back sight on the body, plus a brilliant viewfinder on the lens standard. Attached to the brilliant finder is a small circular spirit level so you can make sure the camera is level for tripod shots. There are screw knobs to give a fine adjustment of rising front and cross front, but no tilts or swings.
     Normally, the Avus was listed with an f/4.5 Skopar lens, but mine has an f/4 Schneider Xenar. Both the Skopar and the Xenar are four-glass Tessar-pattern construction and I don’t think there’s a lot to choose between them for quality. The serial number on the lens is 373658, which dates it in the first half of 1930. The shutter is a rim-set Compur with speeds from 1 to 1/250sec plus B and T, and it works smoothly and positively. The whole camera’s in fairly well used condition but quite presentable.
     I got it about 30 years ago. It came in a case, though not the original, together with three single metal plate holders, three sheaths for cut film and a RADA roll film adaptor. The chap from whom I bought it warned me about a peculiarity with the roll film adaptor. It’s quite an old one, and the red windows don’t line up with the numbers 1 to 8 on the backing paper of later films. He included a typed-out chart giving me the spacing to use. Using the window nearest to the winding knob, this is: 1st picture, wind till the first dot after the number 1 is just moving out of the window. 2nd picture, first dot after number 3, middle of the window. Then use the first dot after the odd numbers 3, 5, 7 and so on up to 15. This gave me eight almost perfectly spaced pictures. I gathered later that this is the sequence given in the Rada owners’ booklet, but I never had one.