The Last Gevabox

Here's one of the more interesting box cameras, the last of the Gevaert Gevabox line.

 

Gevabox

 

Despite looking like a viewfinder camera, this Gevabox camera from the mid-1950's is really nothing more than a box camera with a large plastic telescope-style viewfinder attached to the top. Built for the Belgian Gevaert company by the German Bilora factory, this model was the third in a line of cameras to bear the name. The first was a rather pretty little Bakelite camera taking 6x6cm images on 120 rollfilm and the second was a very elegant conventional box camera taking 6x9 images on 120 film, as does this rather clumsy camera. While this model offers slightly more control with a choice of two apertures and two shutter speeds plus B, compared to the single shutter speed of the second model, it the lacks the focusing adjustment included in the second model and seems to have an inferior lens, f/11 compared to the f/8 lens which performs surprisingly well on it's predecessor. At least this copy is in reasonable cosmetic condition; most of the examples I've come across previously have been very battered and worn, almost invariable lacking the circular Gevaert badge above the lens.

 

It's an ungainly camera to use. One has to turn it on it's side to frame the landscape images that seem to me to be the natural genre for the 6x9 format, and that necessitates some tricky fingerwork if one wishes to avoid camera-shake. The red film window on the rear is very dark, making it hard to discern frame numbers in subdued light, but the viewfinder is reasonably bright and accurate. I ran a test film, Arista EDU Ultra 100, and was rather unimpressed by the results, a few samples of which I'll post below. I've pretended that the images are from a camera from the 1920's, which they strongly resembled in their natural state... The film was developed in PMK Pyro with scans from an Epson V700 Photo using Silverfast SE Software.

 

Kuratawhiti

 

 

Skeleton

 

 

Drive

 

 

Yard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had one of those a few years ago, in my box camera phase. It actually has a charm all its own.

 

 

Kent in SD

Beautiful camera. And good results. Thanks for sharing.

Looks like you can do good work with inferior cameras as you have demonstrated here once more! Is the negative framing so bad or is this an "effect" .. It certainly adds to the images, enhancing the center sharpness. If the default setting is portrait, I too, would hate having to use a 6x9 in the manner. I've found the dual 645 format cumbersome for the opposite (or is that the same) reasons. In any case..enjoyed the results non the less!!

Yes, the edges are just an"effect" Chuck ; as you say, I felt it emphasized the better parts of the negative. The default framing is the vertical format... I don't think I'll be doing too much more with this camera! Thanks, Mike and Kent, for your responses.