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plate. It's a rather large tripod for such a small red lined black velvet focusing cloth.
camera. I notice there is no pan and tilt head- He throws it over the camera and
that's not been invented yet. disappears beneath it. A slight turn of the lens
in its mount and he emerges. "Would you like
He checks that the camera is square by a look?"
sighting along the side of the box, aligning it
with a distant building and slightly adjusts the The sharp little image glowing in the aperture
tripod leg. Fred explains that a robust tripod is indicates his focus is spot on. The inverted
needed to stop camera movement when hand image reminds me of the way it was before the
cranking. days of reflex mirrors and pentaprisms. The
cream semi opaque film makes a good "ground
The camera has no viewfinder so Fred glass" to focus on but that too will disappear
looks across the top of the box estimating the when anti-halation backing is invented.
camera's angle of view: he seems happy. The
feed magazine with its 50 feet of film is slid With no electric exposure meters I ask about
into the dovetail in the top of the box. The calculating exposure. Fred explains that he
short length of cream coloured film needs full sunlight to get his pictures with the
protruding from the velvet lined light- f 12.5 fixed aperture lens and shutter
trap reminds me of a modem 35mm cassette. speed 1/32 of a second. That's at 16
The film is laid in the velvet lined film channel pictures per second, or it's 1/64 of a second
and the two round perforations are slipped if he uses the camera's adjustable shutter for
over the claw pins. Round pins in round holes- very bright scenes. (An adjustable rotary
simple to make, seems like a good idea. shutter-wow! And this is the 1895 design!)
That means his film speed is about 25 ISO.
Fred closes the gate. He decides to check the Not bad for 1899. Back to the sunshine – this
image in the aperture out comes the traditional is Queensland you know, "beautiful one day,

Film transport mechanism: Two claw pins pass through slots in the chassis plate to engage with the film
on the other side. They are carried up and down by a plate deriving vertical motion from a radial cam on
the main shaft. They are also moved horizontally, to engage with the film perforations on the down
stroke, by an axial cam on the same shaft.

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