The All Distance Pocket Ensign 1928 to 1933. One of the great simple designs from the Houghton - Butcher MFG.Co. LTD, of London England.
- Kamera Ostalgie
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
It is 1928, you want to start and take up photography as a hobby, you don't know a great deal about it, but you know enough that you want something that is a little bit better than a box camera, but what do you buy? Well Houghtons 'All distance Pocket Ensign' had to be a contender.
Why? Well I'm biased towards anything Ensign, but I'll try and be objective here. First price, it was thirty seven shillings and sixpence, not that much more than a box camera, it folded up, so it would just go in your jacket pocket. no need to carry it around by hand, it was very simple to use, you just pressed the shutter, focus was simple just two choices portraits or views, three apertures, small medium and large, or sunny, average or dull so all relatively easy to understand, it was very solid and well put together and last but not least it was British not German or American, British!
So lets have a look at these choice points if we may. British! Well, the war agaist Germany had only been over for Ten years, 900,000 British servicemen had been killed, well over 100,000 civilians, and around 1.7 million Soldiers injured, all for nothing, so it was no surprise then that the average Briton in 1928 wanted to buy a British camera, and not a German one!
Build quality! Houghtons had a good reputation for good solid well made cameras, they were built, to put it bluntly. In Britain in 1930, there were no built in failure times like cameras manufactured today, no this was a British camera, it was solid and built to last years, film after film. To be fair the idea that it was a well built camera can be proven, this camera is ninety odd years old, I have not put a film through it for decades, but it still works perfectly, the shutter, though simple still operates fine, the lens is as clear as a bell, the aperture control is fully operative, the bellows still 100% light tight ! I could stick a roll of film through this now and be certain I would get good results. There are not many 1930's folding cameras I could be so sure of! No light leaking bellows like many of its contemporaries. No complicated but unreliable shutters, or lens standards that are no longer vertical and have not been vertical for years, no this is an Ensign and it still delivers!
Simple to use. Look at that, everything you need right their at hand. Shutter options, aperture options and of course focus options, all simple to get at and easy to use.
Just the job for someone new to photography.
A real beginners camera, but capable of good results, so the new owner would not be put off photography by poor results, no he would be encouraged by the results from his Pocket Ensign, so much so that ten years later he up graded and bought a Ensign Selfix 220, which he used and kept for the rest of his life. That was the thinking of the people at Ensign. That thinking worked for Ensign right up until the start of the 1960's, but that story is best left for another day.
Lets have a look at those sturdy but simple features.
The viewfinders. Our Pocket Ensign had two viewfinders, years before John Prescott got his two Jags! One was a folding wire viewfinder. So, you wanted to take a landscape shot of the Queen Mary setting sail from Southampton bound for New York, you just turned the camera onto its side flipped out the wire finder, set your bellows to the views position catch, your aperture to small as it was a sunny day, and pressed the shutter. Job done. Of course you also had the little bright reflex finder to fall back on when needed.
The focus on the All Distance Pocket Ensign was simplicity itself, you had but two choices, views for views and portraits for when you needed to take that picture of Uncle Harold sat in his armchair on his Birthday!
Another feature that I like about this camera is the ease in which you can pop in your roll of Ensign 2 1/4 B Speedy Film. I'm sure our original purchaser was impressed with how easy it was loading the film too. That is one of the reasons why he bought the Pocket Ensign over all the other cameras he looked at at the time. These patented catches just flicked out like little wings allowing the film to just drop in. So simple, nice one Houghtons, no wonder you took the trouble to patent your design!
Look at them, you just flick the catches out with your finger nails, they pop out like the wings of a Spitfire and you just drop your roll of Speedy film in.
Perfection Mr Houghton, and you think it was just the Germans that could design things ? Oh yes, the Brits could do original design too!
What film would you use in your new Pocket Ensign, well only the best of course, a British Film made in Great Britain by British workers, Ensign Speedy Film for me please, non of that foreign Agfa or Kodak rubbish in this camera thank you very much.
Oh no, British camera, British film ! Nothing but the best.
These were really nice well made simple cameras, built to use and built to last, most examples you find today if they have not been abused will still work as well as they did in 1930, simplicity is usually the best.
So what of the history and the changes to the Pocket Ensign ? Well the early versions were without the wire frame finder, the front lens panel did not have the patent number 271186 on it, nor did it have the shutter speed and aperture panel either. These details were directly on the black gloss shutter face, no separate printed plate attached. The name of the shutter was directly on the lens panel, while my slightly later version has a separate name plate pinned on.
These two pictures illustrate the differences much better than my description I think.
In both versions the shutter was called the 'Synchro A Shutter'
More changes were soon afoot for the little Ensign, they were re-named the number one and the number two, the number two having a leather covered body instead of the black crystalline paint finish and a Trichro shutter instead of the Synchro shutter. I'll pop in a picture of one below for you to peruse.
I quite like the standard one with the black painted body, I think it suits the camera. Would my new photographer in the 1930's pay an extra five bob or more for the leather covered version ? No, he would have gone for the black paint finish, as did most of his contemporaries.
The black crackle finish paint Ensign always called Crystalline enamel. Whilst being cheaper to use than leather or leatherette it did give a very hard wearing and durable surface which looked smart and could take hard regular use better than the more traditional leather. I quite like it and it really suits the Pocket Ensign. Some reports say that it was baked on, so it was so durable. Later, Ensign did some coloured versions of the Pocket Ensign, in red, blue, brown and gold, these really looked the part, but unfortunately I don't have any of these I can show you.
But you can see picture of them here.
So that is about it at our look at the All Distance Pocket Ensign of 1928-1933 and like the Queen Mary it is still with us today, a product of another age, built in the biggest camera workshop in the British Empire. Houghtons, Fulbourne Road, Walthamstow London. What a pity we don't have this manufacturer or their factory today. God, they made some fantastic cameras in the 127 years between 1834 and 1961 when Britain was still Great.
My Grandfather used to tell me when I was a kid, '' if you don't buy British, you put another nail in your own coffin'' Looks like he was right all along ! Why did we stop buying these fantastic cameras? That is one question I intend to research in the near future.
I hoped you liked this rather tongue in cheek look at the All Distance Pocket Ensign Camera, might be a bit off the wall? It must be due to the heat wave we are currently suffering! Now where is that cool shade?
Take care,
Phil
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