Present of a Very very old manual film Camera

Dara Robinson

A friend of my sisters is a photographer and is moved away to another country last week. He was selling all his stuff and my sister saw this and thought of me so she bought it for me

I'd love to find out more about how it works. Clearly its film :P no but seriously, I'm going to give it a try.

As you can see in this second picture it has a center section for the film, looks like it goes on a roll. The back pops down and the bit with the white paper comes out in a box with a small whole for the light to come through.

The front also pops off completely to reveal the mechanism. Unbelievably simple system, there is no aperture and the shutter speed is my finger speed

No other settings. You look into the camera from the top also

Has anyone seen this camera any place? I'd be looking to find out more about its history

I took this 3rd one so you can see what the camera is made of

Seems you can use a side and top view finder. the side has 2 leavers for control. The top one seems to simply control which direction I want the bottom leaver to work (flick up to open shutter or flick down to open shutter)

Bloody cool camera but I can find nothing on the internet about it. Its manufactured by GAP and made in France but that's all it says and I found nada on the net about it.

Any ideas?

Buzz Lightyear

Hi Dara

I've a camera very similar to it myself. It was my dads. It is as far as I am aware a Brownie although made by this company called GAP. It uses 127 film which can still be purchased. Like yourself I'd love to put a bit of flim in the back and see what comes out, however I'm just getting back into 35mm b/w so I'm putting it off for a little while.

CabanSail

Very similar to the Box Brownie by Kodak. The first camera I ever used.

Very simple operation, so it makes you think about the image a lot. Good fun. Enjoy!

Thoie

This might help: http://www.brownie-camera.com/articles/petelutz/article.shtml

Dara Robinson

Well thats good news, film might still be available.

Thoie, its close, very close but no cigar But the info is great thanks, I'll be reading though that. I hope it will give me an idea of how to shoot

DaireQuinlan

It might be a 120 camera, or a 127 camera, GAP made both. What does the nameplate at the front say ? I can't make it out in any of your pictures (although actually examining them there again, it seems to say 'made in france'. Doh !) Get a 120 spool from somewhere and see if you can put it easily into the takeup slot. If so then you've probably got a 120 6x9 cm version.

http://www.collection-appareils.fr/gap/html/gap_box_120_bis.php

Camerapedia is your friend in situations like this ...
http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Gap

The shutter also ought to have an 'instantaneous' mode, typically somewhere between 1/30 and 1/60 of a second. My box brownie (which probably has an almost identical mechanism) toggles between instant and t (timed) exposure using the lower lever. Maybe your shutter mechanism is missing a spring or something.

They take great pictures though. do a tag search on my flickr stream (linked in my sig) for 'brownie' I have a couple of shots I took a while back. Well worth trying to get a roll of film into it.

Dara Robinson

Thanks Daire, that is the exact model I have Brilliant!

Dara Robinson

In one of the pictures I see that there is a winding handel for winding up the film after a shot. Anyone know where I might be able to buy a second hand part? Ireland or online?