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Korsten Jumelle N° 10
France Version française
Photos by - text by -. From the collection of -. Last update 2012-02-06 par Eric Borel.

Manufactured or assembled in France from (Before) 1900 to (After) 1900.
Index of rarity in France: Rare (among non-specialized garage sales)
Inventory number: 2191

See the complete technical specifications

Chronology of cameras Korsten 

Traduction de Manuel M

(extract from Photo-Revue 1900)

KORSTEN 8.10 and 12, rue Lebrun. - PARIS.

It would undoubtedly be interesting, in a documented study, to consider photography from the point of view of its intellectual and commercial efficiency . Admittedly, the sales for example of the cameras and the products became a universal keen interest:
It is a mirage of fortune to which many people are let take, including the grocer of opposite or the hatter of the corner…, until the day when the disenchantment proves the necessity for special knowledge to them, and one returns has its irons and the other with its candles. Manufacture, it also, felt of this photographic fever, the inventions emerges from all the brains: pharmacists appear engineers, mechanics becomes chemists, and each one preaches its detective camera, his plate or its small bottle, whose enticing promises can once surprise the beginner, but make still appreciate more with the connoisseur the crushing superiority of the technical productions.

We saw in the monographs Duvau and Reeb (preceding Photo-Revues, which science is necessary to the preparation of the sensitive glasses or the chemical specialities; the building of the cameras requires in its turn as much manual skill than to know theoretical, and we will not astonish anybody by choosing the Korsten company like type of this professional duality.

At the origin, it did not have like today well-established, and did not comprise yet the vast workshops from which these marvels mechanical and precision come out  which established its fame. Since 1885, we have found the chief of this establishment, though modestly established since just for one year, creating some models of boxes to be retracted, and building the first, in Paris, (1880), the retracting chassis with drawer which one was going commercially to know only the next year. It is with it that is due again, around the same time, the always cocked guillotine shutter, which, after considerable sales in France, appears one year later (1888) like an innovation on Italian view cameras. In 1892, Mr. Korsten modified his first model, and it is today, thanks to this improvement, the only used by all the manufacturers for the detectives with simple lenses. The foreign consecration, naturally was not lacking to him, and several great German companies honoured it with an absolutely literal counterfeiting.

Since this time (1890) the Korsten company which had been ensured in a short time the first place among the photographic manufacturers, has been devoted to the speciality of the hand view cameras, and it delivered some so far more than 30000 of various models.

If it were necessary for us to enter in detail of this manufacture, we would review the complete series of the detective cameras and the jumelle camera which, since the appearance of the popular cameras, come out of its workshops, by preceding or completing the improvements in vogue.

That it is enough for us to quote particularly:

1° the detective camera n° 6, created especially for the use of the short focal length lenses.
For this purpose, the fall of the plates is done according to their smaller side; total volume is thus reduced to the minimum. The plate carriers are guided in all their way and are maintained in place; no return is to be feared, even by reversing the camera completely, and a particular device makes it possible to remove the exposed plates without touching to others. As for the shutter, with variable speed for the instantaneous and the pose, it works with a high degree of accuracy and gives a large aperture; moreover, as it is placed at the back of the lens, it makes it possible to remove this one to use it on another camera, precious advantage because of the relatively high price of these lenses.

2° the improved detective camera n° 3, have a rectilinear lens higher, with helical movement for the focusing, with diaphragm iris, a shutter with variable speed, an automatic retracting exposure counter and two viewfinders

3° the detective camera n° 7, of a robust and neat building, though of a moderate price (9 x 12 =45 francs) is the oblige snack of the tourists. Provided with a simple achromatic lens very luminous and of very first choice, moving by means of a graduated helical mount, it makes it possible to do portrait or all other work starting from 3 meters until the infinite, without the help of closer add lenses. It has a system with automatic retracting exposure counter, and the shutter, always cocked, makes the instantaneous and the pose.

As for the jumelle cameras, we recommend the two following types, which builds with the care and the precision of all the signed instruments Korsten, bring together the whole of the requirements dreamed by the amateurs or the professionals:

1° the jumelle camera n°4 (bis) (6.5 x 9, and 9 x12) is of a moderate price, thanks to the simplicity of its organs, and include all desirable qualities of a good camera. The rapid rectilinear lens, the shutter for the instantaneous and the pose (release with the hand or pear), the well adapted viewfinder, the retractor with automatic exposure counter, etc make an absolutely perfect instrument of it.

As for the model n° 10 (jumelle camera with magazine) it is undoubtedly the camera of this kind best understood and built that we know.
The magazine with mobile drawer (that Mr. Korsten, as already said it to us, had the first started since 1886 to build in France), is reduced of volume as much as possible without harming its solidity; it offers a guarantee of absolute light tightness.
The front part of the jumelle camera is mounted by means of a special frame who allows the off-centring of the lens in the two directions. These lenses are exclusively of very great brand (anastigmats, Zeiss, Darlot, or orthostigmats Steinheil).
The perfectly adjusted viewfinder constantly indicates off-centrings in one or the other direction; the shutter, which is cocked by a half-turn with key, works as a guillotine, and ensures an equal exposure of all the points of the plate.

The prices, with lenses indifferently of the three opticians above, are:

6.5 x 9 = 250 fr.
8 x 9 = 270 fr.
9 x 12 = 300 fr
Stereoscopic Format 6 x 13 = 375 fr
Stereoscopic Format 8 x 16 = 425 fr.



We will not insist more on the superiority of the Korsten cameras, not being able to make a best praise of it that by saying them built with the same scruples of precision and checking which govern the building of its multiple scientific instruments.
Photography, indeed, is only one accessory for this company, accessory of predilection undoubtedly because of its beginnings, and it is true that one always returns to his first loves,… At all events, Mr. Korsten mainly owes his fame with his mechanical applications concerned with sciences, and mainly of the steam and electricity. It is the favourite worker of the inventors in search of an intelligence which understands them and of a skilful hand who interprets them; it is the executioner… theoretical of the engineers, to which it gives the life by his practical knowledge of mechanic; it is the regular supplier of the school and private laboratories, so difficult to satisfy for the delicate building of their apparatuses and precision instruments…
 

Korsten Jumelle N° 10





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