Latest haul from eBay
Last week I got a package from the Netherlands. And no it didn’t contain the kind of items that you normally associate with our liberated friends across the channel but a bunch of cameras that I’d got on ebay for a grand total of £6.
First up is a Gevaert Gevalux 144.
I’ve not been able to find much on this one. All I know is that Gevaert were part of Agfa. The camera takes 127 film but I’ve loaded it with 35mm and gaffa’d over the red window on the rear. It has a fixed focus lens and fixed shutter. The aperture is adjustable via a switch from f11 to f16.
I love the look of this camera. No idea what kind of images it produces yet. A Flickr search doesn’t turn up anything.
The other camera I bid on was a TIME magazine 35mm. I think this was originally given away with Time magazine subscriptions and it really is a piece of crap.
Looks like a plastic lens. Claims it’s 50mm fixed focus. The lens is a Kinetic Optical Color Lens. Wow. How cool is that? Do they do an non-optical monochrome version?
The aperture can be changed and has a strange slot like shape to it.
Final camera in the haul was thrown in by the vendor as there was space in the box. A Kodak instamatic 155x. It takes 126 film that is no longer available so it’s another hack to try to get 35mm in it. I do like putting 35mm through cameras that weren’t designed for it. I really like the sprocket hole effect.
[...] Fantastic – The Gevaert Gevalux 144 A couple of months ago I mentioned some cameras that I’d picked up on eBay for a grand total of £6 for 3. The main reason for my purchase was an intriguing plastic camera [...]
Plastic Fantastic - The Gevaert Gevalux 144 « Home of the Hanuman
April 8, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Your statement “that Gevaert was a part of Agfa” is definitely wrong. Up to the merger in 1964 the two companies were independent and ardent competitors, of nearly equal size and turnover. Before the merger Agfa had to acquire a substantial number of smaller German factories to make up for the difference in clout.
Agfa was the photo company with i capital P whereas Gevaert was the phototechnical company doing extremely well in Graphic arts, Photocopying, X-ray, Cine-Film and Microfilm,
This in the end was the good reason for a merger.
Up to the merger Gevaert was for some reason envious of Agfa’s success in the photograhic world and tried in many ways to make up for that. One of the lucky strokes were the cooperation with Pako Corp. of Minneapolis, which had tried previously and unsuccessfully to get a foothold in Europe
At the Photokina in 1964 Gevaert Photoproducten NV. had its last independent stall and introduced the Gevalux 144, unaware that this type of camera was wiped away as Kodak introduced its Instamatic wave.
I was personally responsable for the large photographic photos which adorned the walls of the Gevaert stall.
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Up during the 80′ies and 90′ies Agfa management did not realize the effect of digital photography, and the complete coating facilities in Leverkusen (Cologne) were broken down and sold as scrap. All employees set free
The Gevaert part in Antwerp lives happily on specializing in Graphic Arts and Health care. Strangely enough that part of the business has retained the name of Agfa being a brand name easy to pronounce in any language, where Gevaert always made people uncomfortable when the word had to be spoken
Hans Elfelt Bonnesen
December 4, 2008 at 11:25 pm