Perfex Forty four (1939-1941)

The Candid Camera Corp. of America brought out the Perfex Forty-Four a year after the Perfex Speed Candid (https://fourelementsinthreegroups.blogspot.com/2019/09/perfex-speed-candid-1938-1939.html). The Forty-four weighed 1 lb 8 oz without film. It was about 5-1/2 inches wide, 3-1/4 inches tall and 2-3/4 inches deep. The advertised list price was $47.50 (equivalent to nearly 1,000 depreciated 2021 dollars).

Front

Back

Top

Bottom

Interior of Back

Interior of Body

The uncoated f/2.8-f/22, 5.0 cm Scienar Perfex Anastigmat lens on this camera was made by General Scientific Corp., Chicago. Illinois. The lens is interchangeable using a roughly 1-1/2 inch diameter screw mount. The instruction manual for the Forty-four mentions 4-inch (102mm) and 6-inch (152mm) telephoto lenses, and extension tubes for macro photography.

The Forty-Four has a cloth focal plane shutter. Shutter speeds were 1/1250, 1/500, 1/250, 1/100, 1/50 and 1/25 second plus “B” on the fast setting and 1/10, 1/5, 1/2 and 1 second on the slow setting. A lever on the front of the camera switched from fast speeds to slow speeds. On the fast speed setting the exposure was set by the gap between the first and second shutter curtains and the shutter curtains moved across the film at a constant rate. The slow speed exposures were controlled by a clockwork delay that released the second shutter curtain a split second after the first curtain had fully passed the film gate. The shutter button was in the center of the shutter speed dial. A threaded attachment let you use a cable release.

The range finder eyepiece is to the left of the viewing eyepiece. A lever transfers the position of the lens to a moving mirror in the range finder. The mirror reflects an image of the object to the bottom half of the range finder eyepiece. The top half of the range finder shows the direct view of the object. The two halves line up when the lens is focused on the object.

The viewfinder is a reverse galilean finder with a front concave lens and a rear convex lens. The viewfinder reduces the scene by about three times, like looking the wrong way through a spy glass.

An extinction light meter is built in. The extinction meter has a strip of exposed and developed film with a graduated density and a calculator dial on the back of the camera. You look at the scene through the film strip and pick out the darkest patch with a legible letter. Using the dial you match the letter with the lens opening and the film speed with the shutter setting. The film speeds are the Weston film speeds that were provided by the Weston Electric Instrument Corp. ASA film speeds were not adopted until this camera was out of production.

The flash hot shoe was one of the first to be provided on a camera and took a matching Perfex flash attachment.

To load film you unlatch the two levers on the bottom of the camera and removed the back. The fresh film cartridge goes in the left side film chamber and the film leader attaches to the removable take-up spool in the right side film chamber. You need to keep the camera bottom up while loading so the take-up spool doesn't fall out. The rewind-advance lever on the front of the camera needs to be set to "T" for transport. You replace the back, advance the film three times, and set the film counter to zero.

To unload the film you set the rewind lever to "R" for rewind and turn the rewind knob until all of the film is wound back into the cassette. You then unlatch the back and take out the film.

The Perfex line was a rival to the much more popular Argus C3, but about twice as expensive, and Perfex was ultimately unsuccessful. Argus went on to sell more than two million C3 cameras.