FREE: VINTAGE 1948 ANSCO SHUR SHOT JR BOX CAMERA WORKS

The listing, VINTAGE 1948 ANSCO SHUR SHOT JR BOX CAMERA WORKS has ended.

THIS WAS MY GRANDFATHERS AND HE TOOK VERY GOOD CARE OF IT IT TAKES 120 (B2) FILM OR CAN TAKE 35MM it measures 4" X 5"
The Ansco Shur-Shot Jr. was about as simple as a camera could get. A box to keep the light out, simple meniscus lens (protected from dirt by way of being inside the camera), fixed (small) aperture, simple rotary shutter without so much as a B setting, and the simplest possible film transport -- a knob that turned the take-up spool directly and red window framing. The body of the camera was paperboard with an inexpensive pebble finish leatherette; winding knob and similar items were held by bent tabs punched through the body material. The lens board was just that -- a board, of wood, grooved and drilled to hold lens and shutter where they needed to be, and incidentally to provide stiffness to the flimsy body (the body material was more like modern posterboard than mat board). A stamped steel faceplate covered the front (mostly to keep fingers out of the shutter, since a simple hole allowed light to reach the lens during exposures) and held the simple polished steel mirrors for the two brilliant viewfinders -- one for portrait, one for landscape format.

Film (120, because the camera predated the introduction of the 620 size later adopted for American built Ansco models) was loaded by removing the internal light baffle to gain access to the spools, held in simple spring steel carriages; the advance knob pulled out away from the body to clear the spool. After threading the film's paper leader across the gate and down to the takeup, and turning the spool by hand far enough to lock the paper in place (but not so far as to expose the film, one hopes), the assembly was inserted back into the body (following simple directions stamped into the cardboard of the light baffle itself), the knob pushed home, and film advanced while squinting through a tiny ruby window to look for the framing numbers.