A vintage camera, circa 1920’s or 1930’s, with German shutter and Italian lens, carrying no branding but with an olive green camouflage-colour cover, suggesting it was possibly made for army use.

The Compur shutter mechanism is German, with a DRGM registered design number 258646. The Compur was first produced by F. Deckel in Munich in 1912, this 258646 with dial set shutter speed is thought to be one of the fairly early versions. (See http://camera-wiki.org/wiki/Compur).

The Koristka Salex lens may be Italian, from the same period. .

The camera is working, but it it is approaching 100 years old. The shutter mechanism, bellows and lens appear to be particularly good. It was likely used in the field in a military setting so has some wear and tear and minor repairs. While it is generally operational it requires a little further restoration.

Please read the full description and see all the photos.

Whilst a little repair/restoration appears to have taken place, there are many good working features about the camera:

- the bellows is complete and undamaged, no holes

- the Compur shutter is working properly on all 3 settings. (See note at bottom of this description)

- the aperture iris opens and closes smoothly

- the Koristka Salex f3.5-f51 lens screws in and out with ease, and separates easily for cleaning. The lens glass looks to be in excellent condition- to me as a non-expert it appears to be very clean and unscratched.

- the back lens in the shutter housing is also clean and unscratched

- the rails and focus guide/catch are all very good (when the bellows are drawn in to focus on infinity, press the front of the distance guide to release). The knurled knob in the front cover correctly extends the focus rail frontwards, presumably for close up focussing.

- the hand strap is whole and in good condition

- the plate holder slides in and out nicely

- a matte screen is in the back cover, presumably this could be used to preview the image prior to inserting a glass negative. I’m not sure if this is original.

- the camouflage colour covering is all present but a little dog eared at some edges

Condition points to note are:

- The back plate cover has partially separated from the black material inside and so is loose and prone to falling off, but all the material is present so could be reattached with the right skills.

- the plate which carries the shutter and lens housing has a couple of non-original screws, repairing the spring clips either side. The circular hole in the top piece seems to be to allow the lens to be pulled up and down to be offset to the negative plate, as there are notches for different positions. It’s a bit stiff to move it up and down.

- the drop down front cover is a little tight and needs to be gently prised out.

- the fabric covering is coming away in a few places.

There is a cable release socket and 2 tripod sockets.

Please note I am not a camera expert and have had to work out the operation and what may or may not be missing so please see all photos and rely on those for details of the camera and it’s condition as no returns are possible.

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Notes on ZDM shutter settings dial.

When set to Z, the shutter release lever below the dial opens and closes the shutter - click once to open, once to close for manually timed long exposures.

On the D setting, the shutter stays open as long as the release lever is depressed (or cable release) is pressed for shorter manually timed exposures.

On M setting, the "normal" automated short-timed shutter operates. The shutter must be cocked with the small lever on the other side first for each firing.

The shutter does not need to be cocked prior to firing for settings Z and D.