Purma special quirky/ contraversial camera 1936/51

[fuzzyedges]

Bought at a second hand market because I liked the deco design but after reseaching it turned out to be quirky as well

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The design is reputable based on an areoplane wing? Looking at image 3 it could be

I just liked the way the 3 controls were flushed into the body, film winder, shutter cock and shutter release the only thing that stuck out was the lens and that was taken care of by the lens cover (missing unfortunatly) but when fitted pushes the spring loaded lens into the body and then screws on to the coarse thread seen in image 3 It also stops the shutter being operated with the hood in position

 

Controversy

The camera was concieved by Tom Purvis (commercial artist ) and A C Mayo (engineer) hence the name PUR MA 

The controversy is that the design is attributed to Raymond Loewy a french born american design icon ( he designed the Hillman minx, alpine and tiger sports cars along with the BP logo and coke a cola iconic vending machine and for me this fantastic S1 steam train http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/sunday-streamline-14-the-big)

 

Although Loewy was accredited with the design it is feesable that it was Purvis's design and Loewy's name was used to advertise it

 

Quirky

The facts first

It had three controls Film wind, shutter cock and shutter release

It had a fixed f6.5  21/4 inch lens (56mm)

It took a 127 film which gave it 16 11/4 x 11/4 inch square negatives (hence the two red indicators on the back image 2)

It had 3 shutter speeds slow, medium and fast, these turned out to be 1/50th 1/150 th 1/450 th

Now the quirky bit designed by Mayo

To get the medium speed you held the camera in landscape position

To get the slow speed you held the camera in the portrait position with the film winder at the top

To get the fast speed you held the camera in the portrait position with the film winder at the bottom

Because the negative was square it didnt alter anything by turning the camera except the shutter speed

It was all done by a spring and gravity no exterior controls

To remind you which way was slow and which way was fast the view finder had slow and fast written near it, if you could read it thats what you got, Image 4

 

For those with a technical mind as to how it works

http://licm.org.uk/livingImage/Purma_Special.html

[ChrisLumix]

Gorgeous design. I could live with the quirks just for that.