Grandfather's Camera

Glunz Mod.400 with film pack back, glass plate holders, case and unopened film pack

Taking a picture north of Austin Texas, November 1969

Glunz was a respectable camera manufacturer in the 1920s and 30s located in Hanover, Germany. My step-grandfather, the artist and illustrator Paul L. Gill, bought this folding camera, a Glunz Mod.400, for field work. He used it to take glass slides of scenes that he intended to paint on canvas later. It also took pictures on film using 2 1/4 X 3 1/4 film-packs. In 1969, while stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base, in Austin, Texas, I used it to take black-and-white pictures using Tri-X film packs. I enjoyed playing with it, but reserved my serious work to 35

This camera is typical of a wide range of film-pack cameras that came out of Germany during the pre-war period. The lens is a 120mm f4.5 Meyer-Goerlitz Helioplan Doppel-anastigmat.  It is convertible. The bellows is double extension and the front shifts and rises. The shutter is a dial-set Compur with speeds of 1 to 1/250th of a sec plus B and T. There is no sports finder, but the small reflecting finder is clean and bright and the red spirit level a nice extra touch. Serious focusing would be done with the ground glass back.

The camera is still good condition. The bellows appears to be intact and the controls all work. Most of the black paint is gone from the front upright and the leather has a few “Zeiss bumps,” but otherwise it has survived into its ninth decade in good shape. I still have several glass film holders, the film-pack adaptor, the camera’s case and even a couple of unused Tri-X film packs.