Manufactured by the traditional Darlot Opticien house in Paris, this lens uses uncorrected chromatic aberration to give the image a soft-focus effect, which was to the taste of many at the time.

It’s a bit of an exaggeration to call this a “pocket” camera, but it’s a beautiful wooden camera with red bellows and chrome-plated metal. It makes 2¼ x 4¼ negatives on 116 film. But with (unofficial) adapters you can also shoot on 120 film.

For snapshots on 4.5×6 cm glass plates. Few speed options, two apertures and no focus adjustment. This camera is a delight to use.

A travel camera suitable for taking landscape photos. You can move the lens plate and this is very convenient for photos of monuments and architecture in general.

Anastigmatics in the concept of 6 elements in 2 groups like Dagor. Thanks to the new glasses available, the 1890s was the time when every firm tried to launch its anastigmatics, ushering in a new era in photographic optics.

The success of the Rapid Rectilinear concept was such that many manufacturers used what had already become a category name to name their models. This one combined Dallmeyer’s Rapid with Steinheil’s Aplanat.

Metal shutter to be positioned in front of the lens. It is pneumatically operated and only offers a speed of around 1/20s or B. It sounds very limiting, but it’s a great speed for a huge number of situations on large format cameras.

A new generation of lenses was born in 1890 with the Protars designed by Paul Rudolph in Jena, Germany for Carl Zeiss. These were the anastigmatic lenses, significantly improving the sharpness of images even far from the axis of the lens and even at its widest apertures.

One of the best executions of the Rapid Rectilinear concept in an extensive series of lenses with many focal lengths/openings adapted to different uses.

With emulsions becoming increasingly sensitive and faster, the need arose at the end of the 19th century for shutters capable of dealing with fractions of a second. Curtain shutters, positioned between the lens and the camera, were very popular until the first quarter of the 20th century

The Swiss lens, of excellent quality, boasts an ambitious f/5. If you read the documentation, it’s clear that it’s not the usual geometric f, but a calculation that takes into account more transparent glass and the result “equates” to an f/5.