100 years Null-Serie

[Ambro51]

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Awhile back I bought a QRS Kamra (from 1928).  It arrived with film in it.  It’s a Nitrate base, with “rounded edge” perfs, is yellow in color and is rolled along with. a thin black backing paper, also perfed.  Any idea what that film is?

[nitroplait]

21 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

the 35mm Agfa cassette

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The ad copy reads like it is a disposable cassette "no more messing around in the darkroom...etc".

Was it made of plastic or metal?

Could they be reused if the photographer so desired?

Edited July 20, 2023 by nitroplait
wrote inside the quote area.

[Roland Zwiers]

31 minutes ago, nitroplait said:

The ad copy reads like it is a disposable cassette "no more messing around in the darkroom...etc".

Was it made of plastic or metal?

Could they be reused if the photographer so desired?

It was made from carton/paper so it could not be reused.

Roland

[Roland Zwiers]

36 minutes ago, Ambro51 said:

Awhile back I bought a QRS Kamra (from 1928).  It arrived with film in it.  It’s a Nitrate base, with “rounded edge” perfs, is yellow in color and is rolled along with. a thin black backing paper, also perfed.  Any idea what that film is?

This is an American camera, so it likely used American 35mm film.
Nitrate base was normal for this period.
It is striking that perforated 35mm film used perforated backing paper.
I have not seen another example of this in German literature.

Roland

[beoon]

10 hours ago, beoon said:

Other names in Oskar Barnack's handwriting that could have been Leitz employees, are 'Freund' and 'Neumann/ Naumann".

Hello Roland,

Here is a Leitz employee Dr Hugo Freund (General Manager / Head of Sales Department).

Whilst we cannot be 100% that he was the named person in Oskar Barnack's workbook it would seem a realistic proposal, given that he was head of sales department

Regards

Alan

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[derleicaman]

12 minutes ago, beoon said:

Hello Roland,

Here is a Leitz employee Dr Hugo Freund (General Manager / Head of Sales Department).

Whilst we cannot be 100% that he was the named person in Oskar Barnack's workbook it would seem a realistic proposal, given that he was head of sales department

Regards

Alan

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Hello Alan. Very interesting job description. Prokurist = One who can legally sign. Leiter = Chief or Leader. Verkaufsabteilung = Sales Department, according to my translation program.

[Roland Zwiers]

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33 minutes ago, beoon said:

Hello Roland,

Here is a Leitz employee Dr Hugo Freund (General Manager / Head of Sales Department).

Whilst we cannot be 100% that he was the named person in Oskar Barnack's workbook it would seem a realistic proposal, given that he was head of sales department

Regards

Alan

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Alan,

This is indeed possible if not plausible.
I only have one problem:

Oskar Barnack would have written Dr. Freund.
 

That is when Mr. Freund had already obtained his Dr. degree in 1923.
So in this case we would need to know in addition in what year Mr became Dr.

Roland

 

 

[beoon]

Here is a picture & details for the recipient of Null Series 122

"William Krafft, originally from Wetzlar who opened the Leitz branch in New York"

This information is supplied courtesy of Fabrizio Pangrazi.

Grazie Fabrizio

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[Roland Zwiers]

Alan, Fabrizio,

This is a fascinating research into who-is-who among the recipients of a test Leica in the period 1923-1925!

In the meantime I found an inconclusive text about Dr Freund.
It is part of a longer article with restricted view.

The paragraph that I could copy states that in 1923 the young chemist (born 1 July 1900) entered the Leitz works.
The paragraph also mentions that he changed from laboratory work to the sales department in 1935.

Other sources show that by 1932 he was already called Dr Freund.

Roland
 

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[derleicaman]

1 hour ago, beoon said:

Here is a picture & details for the recipient of Null Series 122

"William Krafft, originally from Wetzlar who opened the Leitz branch in New York"

This information is supplied courtesy of Fabrizio Pangrazi.

Grazie Fabrizio

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I remember seeing this picture in the Lagler books. It is interesting to look at the original management team at Leitz back in those days, and then as they aged and changed in their appearance in later years. We are all so used to seeing the pictures of the Leitz family, Barnack and Berek, we lose sight of the fact that many, many others were involved in the story of E. Leitz.

Edited July 20, 2023 by derleicaman

[willeica]

17 hours ago, Ambro51 said:

Awhile back I bought a QRS Kamra (from 1928).  It arrived with film in it.  It’s a Nitrate base, with “rounded edge” perfs, is yellow in color and is rolled along with. a thin black backing paper, also perfed.  Any idea what that film is?

Here is a piece by John Marriage on restoring a camera of this type. There is a lot in here about film transport. John is a member of PCCGB and is regularly on Zooms with Roland and myself. His knowledge and ability to work with old cameras and materials are astonishing. I can put you in contact with him if you wish.

https://www.refracted.net/qrs-kamra.html

828 film which was used in the Kodak Bantam Special and other cameras is paper backed 35mm film. I have used that film in my example of that camera. It is, however, later than the Kamra. Some time ago I came across some strange small paper backing for film in a very large collection that I am cataloguing, but I cannot remember the format. I will check the next time that I am in that archive, which will probably be in September.

The following may be useful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/135_film

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_perforations#BH

From the description you give your film may have BH (Bell and Howell) perforations which are described in the second link. This could also point to a cine origin for the stock.

The first link mentions the Nagel-Kodak 35mm cassette story which Roland does not like 😇.

William 

 

 

[zeitz]

4 hours ago, willeica said:

The first link mentions the Nagel-Kodak 35mm cassette story which Roland does not like 😇.

William, don't gore the bull.  The article does not say Kodak/Nagel invented the first pre-loaded 35mm cassette.  It says Kodak/Nagel invented the Type 135 pre-loaded cassette.  Agfa's cassette is ignored.  So Kodak/Nagel invented the first successful pre-loaded cassette.  Just like Leitz/Barnack invented the first successful 35mm camera.  

For many years Kodak 135 cassettes were reusable because the end caps were not crimped on.  I only remember crimping being introduced in the 1960's.

[willeica]

1 hour ago, zeitz said:

William, don't gore the bull.

You must explain this expression to me sometime 😇

What you say fits exactly with my understanding of the situation and I was, inter alia, alluding to the ignoring of Agfa. In my discussions with Roland, which started outside this forum, I did leave open the possibility that Agfa's design may have influenced Nagel/Kodak. My own experience of researching cameras and photography has taught me that there were very few  'eureka' moments and that most of the time designers built on the work of others who had gone before and that includes Barnack and the guys at Kodak who created the VPK or the guys at Nikon who created the Nikon F and so on. We should be grateful to them all and that includes the Leitz testers and pioneers such as Dr Paul Wolff etc.

William 

[Roland Zwiers]

William,

I understood you perfectly 🙂
One can also say that the 1934 reloadable Retina cassette was an improvement on the 1932 Agfa cassette.
To ignore this Agfa innovation is not fair and certainly leads to misunderstandings.

I don't think one can say that the Agfa cassette was not succesful just because a later design was even better.
In 1932 it was a great innovation for Leica photography.

These past weekends I have experimented with a Leica IIIb (1940).
Close-up photography with a Nooky is really cumbersome.
I messed up a composition because I forgot to adjust the Vidom scale to 1m.
Later designs (Leica M3, Exakta Varex) work much better in many ways.

But that does not imply that the screw mount Leicas were not succesful in the time that they were on the market!

 

Roland

 

[zeitz]

3 hours ago, willeica said:

You must explain this expression to me sometime

It's an American expression.  If you poke at the bull, you are going to get into a bullfight.  Sometimes people say "don't gore the ox".  If is apparent you and Roland are good friends.  Your postings about all these details are very interesting.

3 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

not succesful

Type 135 is dominant for film shooters 89 years after its invention, despite many failed attempts to improve on it, such as 126 and APS.  Agfa's pioneering working pre-loaded cartridges is of interest to photographic historians, but did not achieve enduring sales for its inventors or their company.  Just like Sony's Betamax tape system was technically better than VHS tapes; VHS was the winner in the marketplace.

[willeica]

14 hours ago, zeitz said:

It's an American expression.  If you poke at the bull, you are going to get into a bullfight.  Sometimes people say "don't gore the ox".  If is apparent you and Roland are good friends.  Your postings about all these details are very interesting.

17 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

Yes, we know each other well at this stage and we are both going to the Leica Archive together in October. What you see here is just a continuation of our other discussions outside of the forum. The Agfa/Kodak discussion is an old topic for us. 

14 hours ago, zeitz said:

Type 135 is dominant for film shooters 89 years after its invention, despite many failed attempts to improve on it, such as 126 and APS.  Agfa's pioneering working pre-loaded cartridges is of interest to photographic historians, but did not achieve enduring sales for its inventors or their company.  Just like Sony's Betamax tape system was technically better than VHS tapes; VHS was the winner in the marketplace

The history of photography is littered with things that did not work in the market or things that were once popular and have now faded away. However, from an historical perspective it is interesting to see how there was interchange of ideas, even among competitors. This is particularly true in the areas of lens design and 'film' format.

William 

[Edward Schwartzreich]

From my own researches over the years, it seems to me that all of the camera and likely the film manufacturers in Germany prior to WWII were "part of the club" as it were, even if not especially intimately chummy.  I do not get the sense of ruthless competition at all, but more of a gentlemanly sort of camaraderie.  So, interchanges of ideas among competitors seems more likely than not.  They knew that advances by one company would ultimately benefit them all.

Significantly unlike Eastman here in the U.S.

Ed

[willeica]

20 minutes ago, Edward Schwartzreich said:

From my own researches over the years, it seems to me that all of the camera and likely the film manufacturers in Germany prior to WWII were "part of the club" as it were, even if not especially intimately chummy.  I do not get the sense of ruthless competition at all, but more of a gentlemanly sort of camaraderie.  So, interchanges of ideas among competitors seems more likely than not.  They knew that advances by one company would ultimately benefit them all.

Significantly unlike Eastman here in the U.S.

Ed

Ed, my PCCGB Zoom on German companies who relied on leaf shutters in the 1920s and 30s touched on this. Zeiss, however, effectively, controlled the shutter market through holdings in and agreements with Deckel and Gauthier. Leica was lucky that it stayed outside this with its focal plane shutter. In the US, however, Kodak bought up many companies that were ‘in its way’ and created mighty market power which may have not been ultimately to the benefit of the broader US  camera industry. I have come across this in the cataloguing of a camera archive which I am doing at the moment. One classic story is the Bulls Eye/ Bullet/ Bulls Eye story which involved Kodak producing a copy and then buying out a much smaller camera in Boston which had produced the original Bulls Eye camera. Ironically, many Kodak products were littered with details of many patents in or about the camera body. This is useful today for dating Kodak items, however. I believe that Helmut Lagler’s books contain details of Leitz patents and which member of staff worked on which patent.
 

William

[Anbaric]

One thing Leitz effectively relied on obtaining from its main competitor was the slow speed mechanism of the Leica III series. By 1933, when it was first used, Zeiss already had a controlling interest in Gauthier, who made it.

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[Roland Zwiers]

On 7/21/2023 at 11:31 PM, zeitz said:

It's an American expression.  If you poke at the bull, you are going to get into a bullfight.  Sometimes people say "don't gore the ox".  If is apparent you and Roland are good friends.  Your postings about all these details are very interesting.

Type 135 is dominant for film shooters 89 years after its invention, despite many failed attempts to improve on it, such as 126 and APS.  Agfa's pioneering working pre-loaded cartridges is of interest to photographic historians, but did not achieve enduring sales for its inventors or their company.  Just like Sony's Betamax tape system was technically better than VHS tapes; VHS was the winner in the marketplace.

Agfa's pioneering working pre-loaded cartridges is of interest to photographic historians, but did not achieve enduring sales for its inventors or their company. 

This is a very interesting discussion on how to judge innovations that may or may not have become commercially succesful.
My observation is that the 1932 Agfa cassette was an important innovation for Leica photography (as 35mm photography was called in those days).
And that this innovation deserves recognition in itself.

My intuition ( I have not yet properly researched this) is that this Agfa cassette was initially quite succesful.
Please note that Agfa (like other film producers) also provided alternative ways to fill a brass reloadable Leica cassette.

• There were pre-cut film lenghts of 3x 1,60 in a tin can
• There were (relatively expensive) daylight refils that could be put in the brass reloadable  Leica cassette in broad daylight
• There was the option of bulk loading with rolls of up to 30m

In 1932 Agfa was so innovative as to introduce an alternative system with non-reusable pre-loaded daylight cassettes.
That was a milestone in itself.

Now after 1932 other systems for 35mm film were introduced as well.

• Agfa introduced a special cassette for the Agfa Karat
• Zeiss Ikon introduced a 35mm ilm roll system for the Contax (winding from spool to spool)
• Kodak introduced a metal cassette for the Retina
• Other firms introduced plastic reloadable cassettes; Ihagee advertised one in 1936 for the Kine Exakta
• And so on

 

Now the question as to which follow-up innovation was commercially most succesful (and why!) is very relevant as well.
But in my opinion it is a separate question.

Just compare this dicusission to the Null-Serie itself, the subject of this thread.
Commercially the Null-Serie was a disaster.
It was extremely expensive to hand-make such a small series of test cameras.
These cameras were fitted with extremely expensive-to-manufacture 5-element Leitz Anastigmats.
Most of these cameras were given away for free!

On top of that the feed-back was not that positive at all: 
the focal plane shutter needed to be redesigned.
And the quality of German 35mm films in period of hyper-inflation left much to be desired.

So why are we still interested in these Null-Serie cameras of 1923?
In my opinion because they provide a unique in-between stadium on the road to ultimate success.
There were many technologcal bottlenecks to solve before 35mm photography could be succesful.

• The Null-Serie helped to solve some hardware issues.
• Agfa, Toxo-Nobel and Perutz provided early software solutions in improving the quality of 35mm cine negative film.
• Professionals like Dr Paul Wolff, Curt Emmermann, Anton Bauman and Fritz Vith introduced innovative exposure and development techniques  so as to obtain the highest possible quality with a tiny Leica negative.
• The 1932 Agfa cassette greatly facilitated Leica photography for non-professionals. 

All these innovations were importantant stepping stones.
All these innovations would be improved upon in later years.
But that does not invalidate their original contributions.

 

Roland