This camera will surely be on your wish list if you love steampunk! Take this American-made 35mm half-frame camera home with you to add to your growing collection or to create beautiful fine art. Its steampunk vintage design will create an eye-catching piece of decor for a shelf, mantel, or desk. It has an excellent brown case, which needs the strap replaced but is still a beautiful accessory! FILM: Half Frame 135 (35mm) HISTORY: This camera's past is about as fascinating as its design. The Universal Camera Corporation (sometimes also referred to by the name Univex) was founded in 1932 in New York City. They made a variety of lower-end cameras that used a proprietary Univex film. Their best-selling camera was the all-plastic Univex Model A, which sold at the time for 39 cents. Universal wasn't known as either a high-quality or innovative company, and while their products weren't wrong, there were just many other alternatives for consumers. In the 1930s, photography was still a relatively expensive hobby, and there was a little need for entry-level cameras for the general public. More and more of the higher-end cameras were coming from Germany for professional photographers. German manufacturers like Leitz and Zeiss-Ikon built high-quality cameras with interchangeable lenses, excellent fit and finish, highly high-quality optics, and shutters with speeds as fast as 1/1250 sec. American companies, however, were still making cameras with shutter speeds that topped out around 1/200 – 1/300 sec. While this was fine for casual photographers, the more demanding professional was buying their cameras from overseas. FEATURES: This is an excellent example but currently non-working Mercury II Model CX half-frame 35mm camera made by the Universal Camera Company out of New York, NY. This camera was ahead of its time and is perhaps one of the most distinct-looking cameras of all time. It used a unique spring-driven rotary focal plane shutter to reach a maximum shutter speed of…
listed on 17 August 2022
