The Ensign Camera Catalogue of 1939
- Kamera Ostalgie
- Jan 27
- 5 min read
One of my favourite makes of cameras are Ensign cameras! All of them! From the simple
box camera to the high spec Selfix, Commando and Autorange folders and everything in between!
Why? You may ask. Well, there are lots of reasons, first an Ensign Ful-View was the first camera I ever owned and used, given to me when I was at Primary School my a friend of my
Father. Second they are British which to me means a lot, made in a period when Britain was still a free country unlike the left wing dictatorship that it has now become today, and third, I like the designs of the Ensign products and the fact they were well made, even the cheaper ones. So today it's cold wet and wild outside, so lets have a brew stay warm and take a look inside Ensigns 1939 product catalogue.
I love the good honest advice they gave their readers on page 3 before they even started looking at the products. The way it is written seems to come from another time, yet it is not that long ago. Lets have a look at the cameras.
The first one you come to is the Ensign Ful-View, one of the best box camera designs ever with its super large view finder.
Ensign also produced the more traditional designed box cameras, these were lower cost, but still very well put together. They were still quite a purchase for the working family in 1939 when the income per week would be around 38 shillings. They produced a 120 film version and a 127 film version.
I'm lucky enough to have one of these little cameras, I have owned it for over forty years, I just love the design and the craftsmanship of it. It is sat in front of me on my desk as I wright this blog.
Let's have a quick look at it !
The design is much older than 1939, in fact when I opened the catalogue I was quite surprised that it was still in production, however it seems it was still very popular, which looking at it you can understand.
The Selfix range was the mainstay of the Ensign camera production in the late 1930's, they had the Selfix 220, Selfix 320, and Selfix 420 folding cameras. The 320 and the 420 were conventional folding cameras of the period, but the Selfix 220 was a little different in style and design and is my favourite of the Selfix series.
I would just love to get my hands on one of these and put some films through it, the design looks just right to me, and look what choice you had in shutters and lenses!
I bet a Selfix with one of the better lens / shutter combinations was a fantastic camera in 1939, dual format, integral masks, changeable viewfinder, film counter and 9 combinations of lens/shutter to suit your pocket! Incredible.
Houghton-Butcher always had strong links with Continental Europe, I wonder what deal they had with the Zeca-Flex manufacturers? It's the only none Houghton Butcher camera in the Ensign Catalogue. Made by Zeh in Germany, some sources say it was discontinued in 1937 in Germany. So did Houghtons buy up all the unsold ones from Zeh? Whatever the story was it was soon put to an end by idiot politicians for the second time in the 20th centaury as
they preferred war once again.
This little last minute addition to the catalogue is interesting. Film prices going up as the British Government started to tax photographic materials to raise money for the forthcoming conflict.
As a major film producer that would have hit Houghton Butcher hard !
The new Ensign 420 a high spec conventional folder but with dual formats and a very comprehensive range of lenses and shutters to choose from.
This page is typical of all the big European camera makers of the time, the reduction of the number of folding plate cameras and large S.L.R'S. A decade earlier and the catalogues would have been full of folding cameras taking various sizes of glass plates and big Soho style reflexes, but like this 1939 catalogue shows, they were relegated to the backs of the catalogues and by the time peace arrived and we had stopped killing each other and weakening Europe in the process, plate cameras and large SLR's were a thing of the past. Roll film and 35mm were the future. What a pity Ensign never made a miniature 35mm camera, they came close with the Multex, a modern miniature camera for 127 film, but this was surprisingly dropped the year before this catalogue was published.
This would have been the way to go, it would have not taken too much to make this 127 Leica inspired camera into 35mm........
Of course Ensign did not just produce and market cameras, they did the whole range of photographic accessories, like this useful looking enlarger above and these early light meters below.
Even 16mm Cine cameras were produced, from large professional style cameras to nice
pocketable outfits, but the price was not cheap in 1939, but I bet they would have been nice to own!
My own Ensign Autorange 20 above. The catalogue image below.
Strangely the Ensign Autorange 20 was still in the 1939 catalogue, this throwback to the 1920's was still hanging on in there, as well as being the most expensive still camera in the range! But if you wanted a rangefinder camera, then the smart money must have been on this one...
The brand new Autorange 220, with a spec that would have worried the guys at Zeiss Ikon as this camera was a serious challenger to knock the Super Ikonta off its perch! Look at this spec, satin chrome, real Moroccan leather, self erecting, coupled rangefinder, combined rangefinder / viewfinder, radial lever focussing, shutter release on the body, mechanical dial film numbering, dual format with hinged masks, seven, yes seven lens / shutter combinations. If you had the money you could get this Autorange 220 with a mega fast 2.8 Zeiss Tessar in a Compur- Rapid shutter. Granted it would have cost you £18 10 shillings, but what a camera that would have been. The super Ikonta beater full stop. One day, I'll get myself one of these!
Well, I hoped you like our little flick through the 1939 Ensign catalogue and your brew with the chocolate digestive, see I knew it would be much better than going out today!
Has anything in this catalogue taken your fancy eighty odd years on?
Take care,
Phil
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