Description
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, & while their products weren't wrong, there were just many other alternatives for consumers. in the 1930s, photography was still a relatively expensive hobby, & there was a little need for entry-level cameras for the general public. More & more of the higher-end cameras were coming from Germany for professional photographers. German manufacturers like Leitz & Zeiss-Ikon built high-quality cameras with interchangeable lenses, excellent fit & finish, highly high-quality optics, & 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 & 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 1/1000 second. The camera's format is 18x24 instead of the standard full-frame 24x36. This means a 35mm roll of film can capture 65 exposures rather than the average 36 exposures. LENS: 35mm f/3.5 coated Wollensak Tricor 3 elements FOCUS: 1′6″ to Infinity TYPE: Scale Focus Viewfinder SHUTTER: Currently not working Rotary Metal Focal Plane Shutter SPEEDS: T, B, 1/20 - 1/1000 seconds ExPOSURE METER: None FUN FACT: in 1937, Universal decided it wanted to design a new style of camera that could compete with the Germans, but at a much lower price. Brand new, a Leica III cost around $200, & a Contax III was a whopping $285, equaling $5112 in 2018 dollars! in comparison, the Argus C3 sold for $25, making it one of the more popular American cameras of its day. So, Universal had the lofty goal of creating a camera that could compete with the Germans in terms of quality, but they wanted it to sell at the same price as the Argus. Since Universal wasn't known as a premiere maker of cameras, they knew they
