No. 5 Folding Kodak

Format

roll film via Eastman-Walker roll holder; glass plates from 1892

System

Kodak Folding

Shutter

Eastman sector, between-the-lens, spring powered and regulated, self-capping; Barker shutter from 1892

Focusing

ground glass from 1892

Metering

none

Spec Notes

The 5 x 7 sibling. Its stops are carried ON THE SECTOR rather than on the lens barrel, which is the one sourced aperture series in the 1890 generation. Body address marking 'Eastman Co. Rochester' dates the first generation, running 1889 to 1892. A DATE CONFLICT SETTLED AT T1: three secondaries gave the No. 5's end as 1897, 1899 and 1893-97; Kodak's 1897 catalogue still prices it at $75.00 and the 1898 catalogue has no 'Folding Kodak' heading at all, so 1897 is right and the 1899 claim is refuted. THE GLASS PLATE MODEL IS A BACK, NOT A CAMERA, AND FOLDS INTO THIS ROW AT ZERO DIMENSIONS. Kodak heads the section 'Glass Plate Kodaks without roll holder for films' - defining the product by what has been TAKEN OUT - and sells the plate capability as a priced accessory under its own heading, 'GLASS PLATE ATTACHMENT', at $4.00 for the Ordinary style and $5.00 for the Daylight. A surviving Ordinary C carries both backs with the body and the roll-film back sharing serial 2029. The 'spring ground glass frame' is a FOCUSING SCREEN, excluded by name from the dimension list. AA-13 lists and prices these separately because AA-13 catalogues PRODUCTS KODAK SOLD, not CAMERAS KODAK BUILT. NO PRICE IS RECORDED ON THIS ROW. AA-13's 'ORIGINAL LIST PRICE' column is not a list price - established in slice 7 and sharpened in slice 8. In this era Kodak's own catalogues give the real figures anyway, and where they matter to a row-shape decision they are quoted in these notes instead of stored as data. DATES ARE MARKET DATES, NOT PRODUCTION. AA-13 heads its columns 'ON THE MARKET FROM / TO'. Where Kodak's own catalogues place a model outside AA-13's span the conflict is recorded on the row rather than resolved. DATING: NONE EXISTS, AND THAT IS A POSITIVE FINDING RATHER THAN A GAP. No serial-to-year mapping was ever published for any Kodak of this era and there is no date code; Kodak's own catalogues print no serial anywhere. AA-13 records only two ceilings - the highest known serial on The Kodak as 5192 and on the No. 1 as 15,559 - and gives no serial note at all for any other model. A serial here establishes only that a camera falls below a known ceiling. What DOES date these cameras is Kodak's own vocabulary and hardware sequence: the body address marking ('Eastman Co. Rochester' runs 1889-1892) and the shutter succession, sector 1890 to Barker 1892 to Bausch & Lomb iris diaphragm 1893.

Fitted Lens

Bausch & Lomb Rapid Rectilinear, 8 in, stops f/11 f/16 f/22 f/32 carried on the sector

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

5 x 7 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1890