Posted 3 years ago
rniederman
(347 items)
I first saw this camera two decades ago and knew it was special. Twenty years later it's now in my collection.
This Flammang’s 5 x 8-inch format stereo field camera made by the American Optical Company (AOC) probably isn’t supposed to exist. It is not in any factory literature. No serial or build-lot numbers are stamped into the wood body. Yet all construction details including the maker’s I.D. plate are correct.
At this time, this the only known 100% original stereo version of Mathias Flammang’s field cameras. The camera also includes an 1889 Bausch & Lomb shutter with single lens for regular photography.
This camera also has a unique single-speed wood and brass stereo shutter unlike anything I’ve seen in decades of collecting. When released, a heavy brass coiled spring spins a wood blade 180 degrees like a fan or a helicopter blade.
Construction is a little heavier than Flammang’s single lens models. So … why is a removeable back needed when Mathias Flammang already patented a rotating ground glass frame that could be oriented for portrait and landscape pictures? (FWIW, Flammang's cameras do not have removeable backs.) My belief is that a format-reduction back could be used in place of the 5 x 8 back.
AOC has a history of accepting custom camera orders. Or maybe it was a factory test to assess a stereo model.
Nice.......
Congrats on this acquisition, very interesting piece!
Thanks!
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Daddy_Nobucks ... yes, it is very interesting. Thx!
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Hi Rob (I guess this is you). This is Larry. There is another one at http://www.piercevaubel.com/cam/amopt/AoFlammangF.Var2.htm. I doubt someone is cranking these out new, especially since mine has some very convincing screwed up wood finish. The lens board is obviously not original but almost matches the color of the rest of it. The bellows were already replaced when I got it, but the owner gave me the old set. They weren't that bad! Mine does not have a removable back I do think that these are the only two, for the reasons you mention.but who can tell?
Best regards,
Larry
Hey, Larry. Yup ... it's me! Yes. I know about the other camera and its restoration. FWIW, I emailed with Greg H. at length about it and its background. BTW, I really like the Morrison lenses, but they predate the body. Still, a nice camera. And agreed, these are probably the only two regardless of being completely original or having some restoration.
Thanks, Sean!