Discontinued
Kfilm camera
Six-16 Kodak
Format
616
System
Kodak Six-16 / Six-20
Is Film
Yes
Shutter
Kodal, Kodon, Diodak, Dakar No. 1, Compur or Compur-Rapid
Metering
none
Research
Kodak AA-13 'History of KODAK Cameras' (model-name strings, market dates, film sizes), transcribed VERBATIM from BOTH surviving scans - pacificrimcamera.com/rl/01541 and brownie-camera.com/manuals/aa13.pdf - across nine differently worded passes, publishing only what was stable. Kodak US product catalogues 1932-33 (rl/00153), 1933-34 (00155), 1935-36 (00157), Jul-1937 (00160), Oct-1938 (00163), Oct-1939 (00165), 1940 (00166), Spring/Summer 1952 (01856), Winter 1956 (02403). Kodak instruction books (cameramanuals.org) and the Pacific Rim instruction-book index ax41, whose titles name factory lens-and-shutter pairings verbatim. Science Museum Group and George Eastman Museum object records. Pacific Rim dealer object records transcribing engraved lens and shutter names. historiccamera, camerapedia (Fandom mirror; camera-wiki.org is blocked by robots.txt), Blue Moon Camera, jollinger, mikeeckman, earlyphotography.
Produced 1932–1936https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/01541/01541.pdfMARKET DATES, not production - AA-13 is headed 'ON THE MARKET FROM / TO'. No price is recorded: AA-13's price column is not a list price. See gear_items.kodak-six-16-kodak spec_notes.
Category: Film Camera
Format
616
System
Kodak Six-16 / Six-20
Shutter
Kodal, Kodon, Diodak, Dakar No. 1, Compur or Compur-Rapid
Metering
none
Spec Notes
Kodak's first Six-16, and the camera that introduced the 616 film size. The 1932-33 catalogue describes an aluminium body 'covered with unusually attractive, pig-grain material - either black or brown', etched metal side panels with an octagonal motif 'which reappears in the lens and shutter mountings', a combination locking lever that lowers the bed, extends the bellows and sets the front rigidly, a brilliant reversible finder, a hinged back and a swing-cover ruby window. NAME ORDER IS KODAK'S OWN AND IS NOT A TYPO: AA-13 prints 'Six-16 KODAK Camera' and the 1932-33 and 1935-36 catalogue headings read 'SIX-16 and SIX-20 KODAKS' and 'KODAKS SIX-16 AND SIX-20'. A relay pass over the 1932-33 scan returned a reordered 'Kodak Six-16' and appended a claim that Kodak put the brand first; that claim contradicts the two headings in the same response and was discarded. WHY SIX-16 AND SIX-20 ARE TWO ROWS. Format is one dimension - 616 gives a 2 1/2 x 4 1/4 in negative, 620 a 2 1/4 x 3 1/4 in - and focal length is the second: Kodak fitted physically different glass, 124-130mm on the Six-16 against 100-105mm on the Six-20, printed in its own 1935-36 and 1940 catalogues and corroborated on dozens of engraved objects. The adversarial pass STRUCK a third leg the research brief claimed, the longer body and bellows, as entailed by the format rather than independent of it - so this split stands on two dimensions, at the threshold, not three. What makes the merge impossible rather than merely unattractive is that AA-13 gives the two sizes DIFFERENT market spans, and one row cannot carry two date ranges. LENS AND SHUTTER ARE AN OPTION LADDER, NOT SEPARATE MODELS. Kodak's catalogues print one heading and one description per camera with a price table of lens-and-shutter combinations underneath, and AA-13 carries one row per camera rather than one per grade. DATING: NONE EXISTS FOR THIS CAMERA. No Kodak serial-to-year table was ever published for any Rochester body, and the CAMEROSITY lens code runs only from about 1940 and only on Ektar, Anastigmat Special and Anastar lenses - none of which this camera was sold with in a year the code was in use.
Fitted Lens
Meniscus Achromatic, Kodak Doublet, Kodak Anastigmat f/6.3 (128mm) or Kodak Anastigmat f/4.5 (124mm)
Rangefinder
No
Negative Size
2 1/2 x 4 1/4 in
Alternate Names
—
Introduced
1932