Ansco Automatic Reflex (1947-1952)

The Ansco Automatic Reflex was a decent twin lens reflex camera that too few people wanted to buy. Ansco made possibly 10,000 of them from 1947 to 1952. My camera has a stamp inside for September, 1947, and a serial number of 0001951, making it one of the first off the assembly line. The list price in 1947 was a whopping $275 (more than $3,000 in depreciated 2018 dollars). The camera cost as much as a Rolleiflex, which was the better camera. The list price was reduced to $145 by 1950, but that did not help sales enough to keep the camera in production much longer.

Front

Top

Right

Left

Back

Bottom

Film Chamber

Use Ansco Film!

The camera has an f/3.5-32 83mm Anastigmat triplet taking lens made by Wollensak (Rochester, NY) in a Wollensak Rapax shutter. Shutter speeds are 1 second to 1/400 second plus bulb. The shutter is set by the lever to the left of the lens and released by the lever to the right of the lens. The shutter speeds are set using a rim around the taking lens and the settings are visible from the top of the camera. The lens aperture is set with a lever on the bottom of the taking lens and the aperture settings are visible in a small window on the top of the camera. A cable release socket is on the top of the camera. This example is not synchronized for flash. A built-in flash synchronizer was to come later in the production run. The camera has a normal twin lens reflex ground glass screen on the top and a focusing knob on the left. The focusing screen does not have a fresnel field lens. The distance scale on the focusing knob is visible from the top of the camera. A reverse galilean viewfinder is built into the reflex finder hood. The film is advanced by a crank on the right. The exposure counter is located near the crank. The photographer lines up the first exposure by looking at the number printed on the backing paper through the red window at the back of the camera and then sets the film counter. A turn of the crank advances the film for the next picture and increments the exposure counter. The camera has an interlock between the shutter and the film advance to prevent double exposures. A small lever near the exposure counter resets the interlock in case a deliberate double exposure is needed or the mechanism has hung up and needs to be reset. There is a depth of field scale on the back. The body is die-cast aluminum with leather covering. The camera uses 120 film, which is still available today, and takes 12 2-1/4" square pictures on a roll of film. The camera has a nice set of features that should have come with a better price.