No. 4 Screen Focus Kodak

Format

123 roll film - "N.C. Film Cartridge, 12 exposures (4 x 5)" - or plates; ONE camera, not two

System

Kodak Screen Focus

Shutter

Kodak Automatic

Focusing

TWO INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS - rack and pinion on a double-extension bed, AND a swinging roll holder: "The whole back of the Kodak containing film is then swung up out of the focal plane and a ground glass, always carried in the back of camera, is placed in position"

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** AA-13'S END DATE IS WRONG AND THIS ROW CORRECTS IT: 1904-1909, NOT 1904-1910. *** The camera is present in the 1909 catalogue and ABSENT FROM BOTH THE 1910 AND 1911 CATALOGUES - the 1911 volume contains no 'Screen' in any camera name, checked by having it list all 21 model headings. This matches SMG's 1904-1909. It is the second AA-13 end-date error in this slice; the 3B Quick Focus carries the other. *** ONE AA-13 LINE, ONE ROW, AND THE SILENT-REVISION HUNT CAME BACK EMPTY. *** Six catalogue years were diffed - 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909 - and ZERO dimensions change: Rapid Rectilinear f/8, Kodak Automatic shutter, 4 x 5 on 123 film, folding double-extension bed, rack and pinion and rising-and-sliding front are constant throughout. The 1906 block LOOKED like a revision because its bulleted list omits the rack-and-pinion and rising-front lines; that is an extraction artefact, and the 1904 text kills it by carrying all three features in year one - 'An extra extension to bellows, operated by means of rack and pinion, permits the photographing of objects' and 'It is fitted with rising and sliding front operated with the most convenient adjustment'. FOCUSING COUNTS HERE AS A MECHANISM, NOT A SCREEN. The build excludes a focusing SCREEN; this is a SWINGING FILM CARRIER that moves the loaded roll holder bodily out of the focal plane so a permanently-carried ground glass takes its place, and it is the whole product thesis - Kodak: 'it permits focusing on the screen or ground glass WITHOUT REMOVING THE ROLL OF FILM FROM THE CAMERA'. THE MECHANISM IS UNIQUE: in the 1904 catalogue no other camera bears 'Screen Focus' and no other camera describes a roll holder that moves aside for ground-glass focusing. Kodak calls it 'ideas absolutely new in camera construction'. No patent claim is printed - NOT STATED, not 'no patent'. THE PLATE OPTION IS NOT A VARIANT: 'fitted with tripod sockets for both vertical and horizontal exposures, with either film or plates' - one camera. AA-13's price reads $87.50 in one fetch against the research brief's $67.50; no price is recorded, so nothing turns on it. SOURCE-HANDLING NOTE FOR THIS SLICE: the WebFetch relay was caught FABRICATING WHEN LED - four times independently, once inventing 'a dial to select the SHUTTER SPEED' to complete a page truncated at 'the only one to have a d', where the real next sentence says the earlier models had a SLIDER to set the FOCUSING DISTANCE. Every reading behind this row was taken with neutral questions, an explicit 'or say not stated' escape hatch, control questions whose answer had to be NO, and a second ask in different wording. THE FILM NUMBER IS AN ATTRIBUTION, NOT A KODAK DESIGNATION ON THIS ROW. Kodak's catalogues of this period name the cartridge by exposure count and picture size - 'N. C. Film Cartridge, 12 exposures (4 x 5)' - not by number. The number reaches this catalogue from AA-13 and from museum records. Kodak DOES print a film number later in the era: the 1927 catalogue and Kodak's own No. 3A Panoram booklet both print 'No. A 122', which is why that one row carries no caveat. Values resting on VULGAR FRACTIONS are treated as unreliable: these scans return different fractions on repeat reads of the same page while prose, model names, shutter names, dollar figures and INTEGERS stay stable. EVERY row-shape call in this slice was decided on an integer, on prose, or on a dollar figure. NO PRICE IS RECORDED. AA-13's price column is not a list price, and in this slice the gap is measurable: AA-13 and Kodak's own catalogues agree to the cent for the Panorams ($10.00/$20.00/$40.00), the 3B Quick Focus ($12.00) and the No. 2 Stereo ($15.00), and disagree by a factor of two to three for the Cartridge Kodaks and the No. 4A Folding Kodak. Where a figure decides a row shape it is quoted in these notes instead. DATES ARE MARKET DATES, NOT PRODUCTION - AA-13 heads its columns 'ON THE MARKET FROM / TO'. Where Kodak's own catalogue presence contradicts AA-13 the conflict is recorded on the row and NOT resolved. DATING: NONE EXISTS. No serial-to-year mapping and no date code was ever published for any Kodak of this era. Specimen serials are recorded where a museum photographed one, for provenance only and NOT decodable: No. 4 Panoram Model C 10368 and Model D 12238; No. 4 Screen Focus 2274; 3B Quick Focus 4763K, 9066K and 7899K; Stereo Kodak Model 1 LENS numbers 52570 and 53277; No. 4 Series C Eastman Plate Camera 792. The trailing K on the Quick Focus serials is NOT SOURCED - no decode exists in anything reachable.

Fitted Lens

Rapid Rectilinear "of exceptional quality", speed f/8

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

4 x 5 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1904