The Ideal Color 35 was made since ca. 1954 by the Camera-Werk Adolf Gerlach in Wuppertal-Barmen, Germany. It's a solid metal construction, compact like the Wirgin's Edinex. It has to be loaded from below. Therefore the bottom plate can easily be removed by turning its locking screw with help of a coin. Then the wind-up spool has to be pulled out of the camera, the film end coming out of the 35mm film capsule has to be wound around that part, and finally the film and spool are put together into the camera so that the piece of film between spool and capsule is shifted into the focal plane. Inside the metal body the camera's film chambers are made of black plastic.
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After closing the bottom the further film advance is done with the single-stroke film advance lever which is placed in the camera top near the shutter release button. On the top an exposure counting scale is visible and adjustable to zero position. In the middle of the top is the reverse Galilean viewfinder. Opposite to the advance lever the top bears an accessory shoe and covers the rewind thumb wheel. The lens barrel is stabilized by a characteristic metal part, like camera top and bottom a deep-draw metal part. On top of this part the camera type name is imprinted. The camera can be focused from one metre to infinity by turning the inner lens tube. On the tin ring around the inner tube the distance scale is printed, as well as the scales for the speed lever and the one for the aperture lever. Both levers are pointers which can be shifted along those scales. A further lens barrel feature is the flash cable connector. Thus it's all in all a full value viewfinder camera. Maybe it could become popular when the concurrent product "Edinex" of Wirgin vanished from the market. It must have been quite popular, so that it was produced as Primo 35 in Holland since 1959, and since 1960 in Spain by Empresa Nacional de Óptica S.A., again as Ideal Color 35. McKeown also shows a name variant called 'Forette', c.1956.
Specifications:
- Type: viewfinder camera
- Manufacturers: Adolf Gerlach, Nixon, ENOSA
- Film type: 35mm capsules
- Lens: Nixon Anastigmat 1:3,5 f=4,5cm
- Shutter: speeds 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and B, maybe everset, but locked after exposure, flash synchronized
- Aperture: five-blade diaphragm, stoppable from f3.5 down to f16
- Viewfinder: optical
- Film advance: fast winding lever, rewind unlock button, rewind thumb-wheel
Links[]
- Ideal Color 35 at museo virtual [1]