No. 5 Folding Kodak, Improved

Format

roll film via Eastman-Walker roll holder, or glass plates

System

Kodak Folding

Shutter

Bausch & Lomb Iris Diaphragm, pneumatic release

Focusing

ground glass, double swing back and sliding front, rack and pinion

Metering

none

Spec Notes

CONFIDENCE IS MEDIUM AND THE REASON IS STATED RATHER THAN BURIED: no museum object exists for the No. 5 Improved, and its specification is carried by Kodak's own 1893 improvement announcement, which is written for the No. 4 and No. 5 together, rather than by a record of the camera itself. The 1893 UK catalogue confirms the shutter change directly - the No. 5 gained 'several improvements including a new iris diaphragm shutter'. 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 Universal, instantly removable and convertible to a wide angle

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

5 x 7 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1893