No. 5 Folding Kodet

Format

glass plates or roll film (roll holder extra)

System

Kodak Kodet

Shutter

Kodet, time and instantaneous; Bausch & Lomb iris diaphragm on the upper rungs

Focusing

rising, falling and sliding front, adjustable swing back, ground glass behind a hinged door

Metering

none

Spec Notes

*** THIS FOLD NEARLY FLIPPED AND THE REASON IS RECORDED. *** The 1895 heading for the Special advertises '(FITTED WITH BAUSCH & LOMB IRIS DIAPHRAGM SHUTTER)', which reads as a second dimension - but the same entry's body text says 'Kodet shutter speed regulated by lever', a contradiction inside one Kodak page with both halves reported, and the 1897 catalogue offers the PLAIN No. 5 that same iris shutter at $35.00. The shutter is therefore a rung on both cameras, leaving the swing back alone. Two dimensions from the No. 4 Folding Kodet - format and body scale. 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

single view lens or rapid rectilinear; a Bausch & Lomb Kodak rapid rectilinear on the top rung

Rangefinder

No

Negative Size

5 x 7 in

Alternate Names

—

Introduced

1895