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chris burck
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 01:40 am: | 
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oe of the cameras i mentioned in the other post came 'bundled' with a king lens in a vario shutter. a front element focusing regulon 1:4.5/50mm. presumably post-war since there's a red 'c' which would stand for 'coated'?
i've never heard of kind making folding cameras, or lenses for them. anyone have any information on this?
how about the lens itself? anyone know about its construction, performace, coerage, etc? it appears to be a triplet, but i haven't tried to open it up yet to find out. and i'd assume it's for 35mm? |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 04:57 am: |
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The lens probably comes from the King Kamerawerke (camera works) which manufactured the Regula cameras after the war. I think most of their lenses came from Steinheil, but it is possible that they bought some lenses from other manufacturers and had them engraved with their own trademark. It is probably a three-element lens, designed for 35mm format. Many of these lenses had mediocre performance.
I did not find the post you mentioned about the cameras you bought. Regula-King never made any folding cameras, only 35mm cameras with rigid lens. |
chris burck
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 13, 2004 - 08:15 pm: |
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i was referring to my post about opening up a compur. i didn't mention any cameras in particular, just that the compur i was asking about came from one of several older folders i've gotten. sorry about the confusion.
there's definitely no confusion about this lens, though. it's a king. and it's unmistakably for use in a bellows/folding camera, which is why it's so interesting. it's a bit beat up, though. not sure it can b put back into good nick.
-chris |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 14, 2004 - 07:43 am: |
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If it's a 50mm lens it was designed for a 35mm folder, I think. Some months ago there was an article about the King/Regula camera works in a german collectors magazine, but they did not mention any folding cameras ever made by King.
When they started camera manufacturing in the late 40s, they first designed a rather simple 35mm camera but then they had the opportunity to get access to Steinheil lenses already assembled in a (Prontor?) shutter, redesigned the camera and then released the first model of their Regula cameras.
Also, from the mid-50s on most 35mm cameras used 45 or even 40mm lenses. It doesn't seem too simple to identify this lens - or the camera it was designed for. |
Zvi Shperling
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 31, 2006 - 04:49 pm: |
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Hi,
As an israeli photographer and collector too,i would like to find some article,or details about Regula sprinty camera,Germany made.
Thank you
Zvi
Israel
Bat-Yam city |
WernerJB
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2006 - 07:15 am: |
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Hi Zvi, right after WW2, at the very beginning of the economic miracle happening here, quite a number of companies emerged from literally nowhere and offered a number of relatively simple and sturdy cameras, like KING KG at Bad Liebenzell in the Black Forest region. Their early cameras were given unusual female names like Regula and Cita, had German Prontor shutters and Steinheil lenses (Cassar, 2,8/50). There were also cameras with interchangeable lenses, etc. in the sixties . Later, in the early seventies, they also offered flash units and what they wrongly considered the right "answer" to the Japanese technological invasion: cute practical 35mm "compact cameras" on the low/cheap end of the market. But even then their fate, like that of many other German competitors, was sealed. Those cameras couldn't successfully cope with the better equipped foreign brands which also had a lot more eye appeal, so they vanished from the market. But KING/Regula produce is often seen on German ebay, and I know - as I was interested in those old German cameras before I detected Japanese rangefinders - there are some fairly informative sources on the net, like http://www.mwclassic.com/articles/irregular_regulas/irregular_regulas.htm for example.
I hope this helps a bit, W. |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 05:41 am: |
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Actually King of Bad Liebenzell existed pre-war - as a manufacturer of parts and supplies for the clock industry. During war they had to manufacturer precision parts for non-civil purpose. When war was over they turned to manufacturing cameras.
Most other early post-war german camera manufacturers were start-up companies of which some disappeared as quickly as they were founded. One reason is - as Werner pointed out - that many of their products were mediocre at best. Some better designs had problems entering a market which was well-supplied by companies which already had gained reputation. There have been several german Leica clones but none of them was manufactured in large quantities, as well as some SLR designs. |
Joe
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 07:12 am: |
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at some point didn't King Kamerawerke / Regula just become a marketing label? I swear I had a disc camera (80's) that was a Regula and I'm fairly/almost sure it was Taiwanese.(?)I always thought that king was a bad name for a german camera because it doesn't sound german to english ears. Should have been called Kaiser or Koenig. |
WernerJB
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 07:57 am: |
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On the one hand, and this is just speculating a bit on the pronunciation of the word, south German/Bavarian for "König" (king) sounds like "kini" [keenee], this is not far from KING. On the other hand King could be a name of German origin, and because the name obviously has some market appeal, it was probably capitalised and this gives it the intended royal emanation, so everybody associates it with nobility.
Joe, you are right, Regula was used as a well-reputated name on scrappy Asian fleamarket cameras, maybe this is still the case. |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 11:43 am: |
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King is a real german name in this case. Maybe later they marketed some imported cameras. The 'real' King logo is a K in a shield of arms, with a crown upon it. |
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