Sure-Flex
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| Sure-Flex image by John Kratz (Image rights) |
The Sure-Flex is a pseudo TLR camera for 2¼-inch square exposures on either 120 or 620 film.[1] It is a modified copy of the Anscoflex II; so precise a copy that Ansco must surely have supplied the tools for making it. It was made by Ace Camera Equipments Private Ltd of Mumbai, India. The bottom of the camera is stamped MANUFACTURED BY ACE CAMERA EQUIPS. PVT. LTD. BOMBAY 34 INDIA.[2][3] This is in the south-west of the city, close to the Mumbai Central railway station.
Like the Anscoflex, the body of the camera is metal, and it is painted with a similar olive-green enamel paint. It has an Ace Smitar 75mm lens with fixed focus. This is a 'double meniscus' (presumably this means a periscopic arrangement; two meniscus lenses arranged symmetrically) made by the American Optical Co.; part of Ansco.[3] Whereas the Anscoflex has a fixed shutter speed and aperture, Ace added slider controls on the front face to select between two apertures (f/11, labelled as for colour and f/16 for black-and-white film), and two shutter speeds, 1/50 and 1/100 second. The shutter is synchronised (presumably for bulb flash, like the Anscoflex): there is a PC socket in the left side of the body. Examples of the camera seen do not have the Anscoflex's threaded bush above the PC socket to attach a flashholder directly to the camera; however, Ace did offer a flash unit of some sort.[3] There is a tripod bush in the bottom of the camera, but no 'B' shutter.
The lens, finder and shutter and aperture controls are covered by an unpainted aluminium cover. Opening this 'Slide-o-matic' cover also unfolds the side barn-doors of the viewfinder hood.
The camera uses a red window for film advance. Ace abandoned the Anscoflex's broad winding knob, replacing it with a smaller one in line with the upper film spool. This must have done away with some gearing and the knob's ratchet mechanism, making the camera simpler and cheaper to make. Comments below John Kratz's photograph at Flickr suggest this alteration may have involved prototyping by Ansco - one commenter states that there are Ansco-branded Sure-Flex cameras in the Robertson Museum in Binghamton; the commenter claims to have examples of the camera with different forms of the winding knob.
Notes
- ↑ The Anscoflex cameras are for 620 film; however the Sure-Flex was advertised in 1969 (by Patel India, perhaps acting as distributor) as making twelve exposures on 120 (not 620) film: see a Sure-Flex Advertisement in the Illustrated Weekly of India, Vol. 90, No.19, p13, by Patel India Private Ltd. Archived at Internet Archive.
- ↑ Example seen for sale as Ebay item 293220496073.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 The lens is described as a double meniscus in an advertisement for the Sure-Flex in Sports and Pastimes Vol.19, No.42 (16 October 1965) p49; archived at Internet Archive. The advertisement gives the address 68 Tardeo Road, Bombay 7. A flash attachment is mentioned but not shown or described.
