Bussox-Sport Luxe Camera

he Bussox-Sport Luxe camera is another beautiful camera purchased at the Paris flea market when my wife and I traveled there this past summer. While visiting one of the hundreds of stalls within many buildings comprising the Paris flea market, I found a wonderful gentleman with a case of cameras and other photographic items for sale. 

My Bussox-Sport Luxe Camera

As I mentioned in many of my previous blog posts, I love cameras that are colorful or unusual. Maybe they are toy cameras shaped like a soccer ball or a cartoon character. I own many colored box and folding cameras that are different from ordinary black box or folding cameras. That's what drew me to this wonderful, small, and odd camera.

 Within the stall, there was a case containing a group of glass negatives, the Zeiss Super Nettel that I previously wrote about, and this lovely exotic brown camera, which looked very familiar but had a name that I wasn't familiar with. I purchased all the items and went on my way to find other treasures.

 When I returned to the hotel, I took the brown bakelite camera from its case and did some more research. I found out the camera is called Bussox-Sport Luxe, made by Ruberg & Renner and explicitly exported to France from their factory in Germany. Also, looking at the back of the camera, it appeared to have a roll of film still in the camera, and the number on the frame was four, so with any luck, I could process the film and find other photos that might interest me.

The Company:

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post on a different Ruberg & Renner camera, and at that time, there needed to be more information regarding the company. In that post, I wrote: The Ruberg cameras were manufactured by the Ruberg & Renner company, located in the Delstern district of Hagen, Germany, during the 1930s.  The company was started in 1918 by Josef Ruberg, who originally started producing drive trains for bicycles, motorcycles, and automobiles. After 1930, the company began making simple cameras. In 1931, Josef obtained a patent for constructing a simple camera in Germany. He also received a patent in the United States in February 1932.

 The patent application states that the simple and very inexpensive production of all the camera parts from synthetic resin, which was done from a single pressing process, "makes it possible to place a cheap camera on the market that is affordable to all. " In the 1930s, Ruberg & Renner manufactured four models with 25 designs for export to the USA, Great Britain, and France. The cameras' construction ended in the mid-1930s when the company started producing products to help the German war effort.

 After doing some digging, I came up with the following: Along with cameras, chains remained the company's main business. From 1935 onwards, the series production of ammunition belts marked the end of camera production in Hagen, which shortly afterward followed. 

 Josef Ruberg had designed new metal cartridge belts for machine guns in 1917. The Treaty of Versailles banned the production of automatic weapons and accessories from 1919 to 1935. In February 1936, Ruberg & Renner applied for a patent for a metal cartridge belt for the MG 17 (caliber 7.92x57 mm). These specialized units are equipped with ammunition for machine guns and military equipment in the military air force. The sons also worked in the company. Felix (1909-1994) was born in 1937 in Delstern. It manufactured on-board gun carriages until the beginning of 1945. In 1941, his son Werner (1912-2005) took over the management of the Ruberg & Renner chain works.

 Ruberg & Renner continued producing drive and transport chains in 1947. The Felix Ruberg metal goods factory manufactured household appliances. From the early 1950s, Ruberg & Renner promoted cycling and motorcycle sports. Roller chains were used in particular here. Until 1967, the company, like the Schweinfurt Torpedo Works and Fichtel & Sachs, had its racing teams in the Federal Republic. In the following years, the firm of the US-American company Rexnord was taken over. Rexnord Kette GmbH relocated its production from Delstern to its current location in the Lennetal near Fley in 1982. Much of the historical information comes from the Westfalen Museum.

My Camera:

My Bussox-Sport Luxe camera is 3" tall, including the winding knobs, by 3 5/8" wide, by 1 5/8" deep with the lens retracted and 2.5" deep with the lens away from the body and focused to the closest focus distance, which is 1 meter. The camera weighs 6.1 oz, which is very small and compact, and takes 127 rolls of film, producing 1.25" by 1 5/8" sized negatives. On my camera, it's etched by the previous owner 4x6 1/2 in many different places.

To open the camera to load the film, a chrome button is on the left side of the camera if you're holding it to take a photo. Press the chrome button, moving a brass grip from holding the door closed on the camera. There are a couple of "thumb grips" on both the back door's top and bottom, which you hold onto to open the back. The back door doesn't come off the camera as it's hinged, and the door swings to the right to open.

On many cameras, to load the film into the camera, you pull up the tabs that hold the spool into place, which I tried, but the knobs didn't move. You need to turn the knobs which make you think you're unthreading them. By doing so, the knobs move away from the body of the camera, and you can load a roll of film or move the empty spool into the take-up position. The fresh roll of film goes into the camera's right side and you pull the leader to the left side where the take up spool is. This is backward to many cameras, or the many that I use, as the take-up spool is generally on the camera's right side.

Now that the film is loaded into the camera, it's time to take photos. The camera has a straightforward meniscus lens. There is a knurled collar around the lens that you need to turn in a clockwise motion to extend before taking a photo. The lens barrel is on a helicoid, which extends the lens when the knurled ring turns, much like on a bolt.

 For the shutter, two settings are located in the upper right of the lens and include settings "I" for instant or turn the wheel to "T" for time. Below the lens are the aperture settings. On this camera, since it's for the French market, there is Grand for the widest setting and Petit for a smaller aperture setting. One of the settings is Ferme, which means firm. When the aperture is set at Ferme, it does not open over the lens or block all light from reaching the film. 

Focus control on Bussox-Sport camera

Since there is no lock for the shutter, the shutter release in the 7 o'clock position on the lens can fire at any time when pressed. Whether the lens is out or in, the shutter will fire. This setting is similar to a lens cap, and by putting it in position, if the shutter fires, no frame will be exposed to light or wasting film. The photographer would need to consciously set the camera into and out of this setting every time they put it into the case or pocket, then change it when taking a photo.

To retract the lens to put it back into the camera case, you turn the knurled ring counterclockwise, and the lens retracts into the camera body. I can now understand the "Ferme" setting, as many of the negatives on the roll in the camera when purchased were exposed with the lens in the retracted position, as you can see in the results area on the post.

The results:

As mentioned, the camera had a roll of 127 Agfa film, so I walked in front of my house and took photos of a planter box and some trees in our neighborhood. There were only about four photos left. After taking the photos, I went home and processed the film. It didn't surprise me, but the images within the camera didn't turn out, and the ones I did around our hose turned out barely and were extremely thin in the exposure on the negatives.

 Here are the results from the film in the camera. As I mentioned earlier, I did note that it's easy to take a photo when the lens is retracted, making the image size smaller on the negative, which you can see on the negatives.

My Conclusion:

The shutter on my camera doesn't always work, so while I'd like to put a fresh roll in it and try it again, I don't think the shutter can take it as it's barely opening and closing as it is. I'll get brave and see if I can take the front off and fix it, but it's resting along with many other cameras in my collection. I love the color and the helicoid lens system.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to look over this week's blog post. I'd love to hear from you, so let me know your thoughts and if you have any of the Ruberg & Renner cameras in your collection.

Until next week, please be safe.

 

Dan 35 I Camera

My Dan 35 Model I camera

I need to start this post back in time. I first started collecting cameras and other photo items in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I can remember purchasing one of McKeown's Camera Price Guides and spending hours combing through each camera manufacturer, looking at the cameras they had made in the past. There were so many odd and unusual like very rare original Leica; the very first bullet-shaped brass Voigtlander camera, the Compass camera or Photosphere that I could only dream of owning, and many were so far from the price budget that I knew there were only a pipedream.

 Many large companies, like Eastman Kodak, Polaroid, and Zeiss, made hundreds of different model cameras, which were abundant. Then, there were the smaller camera companies that produced unique cameras, like Univex, which was the first camera I owned. It was a Uniflex that was given to me by my uncle Bud, who, to this day, along with my brother Tim, I owe my love of photography.

 Then, I can remember thumbing through the price guide and finding a tiny company that produced a camera near and dear to me, the Dan camera. I immediately thought I needed to find one of these to put into my collection. My initial search was hopeless, as many of the local flea markets and antique stores I'd frequent only had the very common Kodak, Polaroid, Zeiss, and other companies like Herbert George and other American brands.

Online Auctions:

It would help to remember that this was before eBay, which didn't exist before the mid-1990s. I was an early adopter of buying and selling on eBay in 1997. At that time, there were no photos, and it was mainly just a buy/sell board with an auction element so you could post a camera or item for sale, but you only had the description from the seller to go by. When I first joined eBay, there was no name to have but a number. My original number was 1034; you had to do everything through DOS.

 EBay made a massive difference as it gained popularity. It changed how people bought and sold items. Adding photos gave the buyer more confidence in their purchase, and rarer items could hit higher pricing due to the inability to find them.

 For many years, the Dan Camera was very elusive, and since the camera was from a smaller company, the scarcity and pricing made the purchase of it next to impossible up until a couple of years ago when I was looking through a different online auction website, and I found a grouping of cameras which piqued my interest. As I zoomed in to look at this lot, there was a portion of a lens I could see.   I could barely read "Dan" on the ring around the lens as I looked closer. Here was my chance to finally own the elusive Dan 35 camera.

Name embossed on the back of the camera.

 The auction happened, and there was minimal interest in this group of cameras as many of them were very common items. However, these are the groups that I really enjoy because tucked away in the corner "could" have a gem hidden, and in this case, there was. I won the camera lot, got the items shipped to me, and there it was as I unwrapped it: the Dan 35 camera. To my amazement, it was the first model.

History:

The Dan 35 is a simple Bolta film camera made in Japan after WWII. Bolta film was invented by Johann Bolten, who founded Bolta-Werks in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1936. The film was to go into his smaller, more compact cameras named the Boltavit. Bolta Werk later produced the Photovit line of cameras from 1936 to the 1950s. Bolta film was incorporated into many different cameras during this period and was a nonperforated 35mm film with a paper backing loaded into special cassettes. Later models of film were spooled similar to films like 828 and 127.

Stetch of Dan 35 Camera by Hagimoto Danji.

 The Dan 35 camera was made by Hagimoto Danji. He built a small plant in Suwa to manufacture the Dan 35 camera, which he sold in his camera shop in Ginza after WWII in 1945. After the moderate success of the Dan 35, there were three different distributors for the camera between 1945 and 1950, when the camera company went bankrupt. The logo on the camera coincides with the company's name, which is H for Hagimoto above Dan for Danji on the far right of the camera.

 Here's where it gets a bit fuzzy. Yamato Koki Seisakusho was a camera company that started in Tokyo in 1943. It made shutters for Japanese camera companies like Gelto and Leotax. The first cameras produced by Yamato were the Minon 35, Minon Six, and Pax 35.

 Yamato, known to produce the Minon 35, a copy of the Dan 35 III and later the Pax 35, is a camera that is a copy of the Super Dan 35. Some sources say Yamato made the Dan 35 and Dan 35 II, but others say they took over producing the Dan 35 after Hagimoto went bankrupt in 1950. Yamato produced the Pax line in the 1960s.

My Camera:

The Dan 35 is a very simple camera with a torpedo-shaped viewfinder on top. It measures 3.25" wide by 2.25" tall from the base to the top of the finder and is 2" deep from the front of the lens to the back of the camera. The camera weighs a whopping 5.2oz and is considered a miniature camera. The Dan 35 has a Dan Anastigmat 40mm f4.5 lens with a Silver-B shutter.

Around the lens is the focus ring, a helicoid focus measuring from 1 meter to infinity. Just behind the aperture numbers on the lens is a knurled ring that sets the aperture. In front of the aperture numbers is another knurled ring that sets the shutter speeds on the camera. There are only shutter speeds, 1/25, 1/50, and 1/100 sec, along with B. On the left of the knurled ring is a cocking lever to cock the shutter, and the shutter release is on the right side to expose the film.

Logo and Torpedo viewfinder

 To load the film, on the top of the camera is a locking lever with "L" for lock and "O" for open. Switch the lever to "O," and the top comes off to load the film. The base comes off to load in later models like the Dan 35 Model II. My camera has no spools to load the film, and the shutter doesn't work. On the back of the camera is a red window with an open/close lever to see the numbers on the paper backing of the film so you know where to stop for your next exposure. Also, Dan 35 is embossed on the back of the camera.

Conclusion:

Unfortunately, I don't have film, and the camera's shutter doesn't work, so I couldn't take photos with this camera to share.

 I mainly have this camera for a couple of reasons. One is its rarity; the more important reason is that it has the same name as me, so I get a kick out of that. I have another miniature camera set aside for next week's blog post, which I also find fascinating.

 Thank you for taking a few minutes to review my blog post about the cameras in my collection. Please be safe until next week.