Fig. 46.—English type “E” hand-operated plate camera.
In several respects the mode of operation of the two types is the same. The unexposed plates are held in a magazine lying above the camera, in the axis of the lens (Fig. [32]). After exposure the bottom plate is carried to one side and allowed to fall by the action of gravity into the receiving magazine. In the C type (Fig. [45]) an opaque slide is drawn between the lens and the (variable-opening) shutter during the setting operation. During the exposure period this slide projects into a compartment on the opposite side of the camera from the receiving magazine, thus making the camera mechanism three plates wide. In the E type (Fig. [46]), a flap over the lens makes it possible to dispense with the sliding screen, and reduces the camera to about the width of two plates. In the C type the plates are changed by a handle on top of the camera; in the E type provision is made for distance control by cords, and for shutter release by a Bowden wire. In both cameras the operation of plate changing also sets the shutter, a definite advance over the two preparatory motions in the French apparatus. The C type was constructed of wood, the E of metal.
Fig. 47.—Italian (Piserini and Mondini) two compartment magazine hand-operated camera.
Italian two-compartment magazine camera. A camera designed by Piserini and Mondini was used to some extent by the Italian service toward the close of the war (Fig. [47]). This has the desirable feature just noted in the C and E cameras: the operations of plate changing and shutter setting are performed in a single motion. Unlike those cameras, however, the plates are changed from one compartment to another of the magazine already described, without dependence on gravity, by an entirely positive shifting action. The setting of the self-capping focal-plane shutter is accomplished by a projecting finger engaging the shutter mechanism. Cameras of this general type, built for 18 by 24 centimeter plates, with interchangeable lens cones, removable shutters, and preferably magazines in which the center of gravity does not shift as the plates are changed, represent the next step in advance of the French practice, and may indeed prove all that is necessary or desirable in camera complexity for peace-time photography from the air.
The standard Italian camera and similar types. The camera (Lamperti) which the Italian Air Service used almost exclusively during the war exemplifies a type quite different from anything as yet described (Figs. [48] and [49]). Plates to the number of twenty-four (13 × 18 cm.) are loaded into a chamber at the top of the camera. Each plate is held in a septum furnished with projecting lugs at one end. A lever acting through a Bowden wire, exposes the bottom plate, which then swings downward about these lugs as pivots, and is forced by a pair of fingers into a compartment at the side. The between-the-lens shutter has a single speed of 1
150 second, and variation of exposure is achieved by altering the lens aperture.
Fig. 48.—Various plate changing devices.
The great advantage of this camera is its simplicity, a single motion performing all the operations. Its disadvantages are its dependence on gravity for operation, its between-the-lens shutter, the limitation set to the number of exposures, and the necessity for removing the whole camera to take out the plates for developing. In actual practice the camera has worked out well. The better light found in the Italian as contrasted with the northern theatre of war makes the between-the-lens shutter at high speed adequate, while the limitation to the number of exposures has been met by carrying several complete cameras in each plane. Because of the Bowden-wire operation these cameras need not be accessible to the observer or pilot, so that the practice of carrying them in single-seaters was common. Attempts at standardization of Allied practice through the adoption of standard lens cones were, of course, out of the question with this camera. With its limitations of shutter efficiency and plate size it is doubtful whether it would have been satisfactory outside the service for which it was developed.