The Ensignette No 2. A folding strut camera from the 1920's
- Kamera Ostalgie
- Jul 9
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 10
Houghtons Ensignettes brought popular photography for the masses to Great Britain starting in 1909 and ending in the early 1930's with the Vest Pocket Ensign. For over twenty years these cameras dominated the emerging 'snapshot market' of the time, from very simple and basic, to quite complex specifications, with upwards of 60 different variations before production ceased in around 1930/32.
British Soldiers took them to the trenches in 1914 to document the Great War which everyone said would be over by Christmas and would be a great adventure. When peace finally came in 1918 with millions dead and nothing gained, the Ensignette was there to guide us through the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and the Jarrow marches. Most of the first half of the 20th century could have been and was pictured by the Ensignette, as that many were sold all over the British Empire.
Ensignette film production carried on being produced by various large scale makers right up until the mid 1950's. British Film manufacturer Standard were said to still produce it on a small scale right up to the mid 1970's.
Today, most current blogs try to cover the vast range of Ensignettes in one post. However we at Kamera Ostalgie are just going to look at each Ensignette one model at a time, just because we can and we like to be different. So then, lets look into the No2 Ensignette, and the 1920's alloy bodied version in particular.
Originally when first produced the Ensignette was made out of brass. However in about 1920 they started being produced out of an alloy. The give away signs are the cheeks on the front plate and the ribs on the camera back, which I presume was to put some degree of strength back into the pressings, which would be needed now in the much lighter alloy material. Oh and of course the camera would now be much lighter itself as a result!
So, this No 2 Ensignette took six exposures of 2'' x 3'' on a roll of paper backed Ensign E 2 film. Or if you prefer Kodak 129 film. Kodak actually made 129 film especially for the Ensignette No2 in1913, as E2 film sales were so high. Kodak did not even have a camera that took 129 film, so the vast sales of Ensigns E2 film must have frightened them. Never before had Kodak produced a film for someone else's camera. Some reports say that this was discontinued in 1951 by Kodak, but as mentioned earlier, the British Firm Standard continued to produce it until sometime in the mid 1970's. Ensignettes were still being used by their owners on a regular basis, decades after camera production ended.
Inside the camera back is a red 'Caution' sticker and the camera body number which is stamped around the red window in a rather crude fashion. The number is 2857 with the number 7 being higher up and off line from the rest. I suppose this is due to the lack of a large flat area on the back?
Usually ensign would put in a sticker saying what size of Ensign film to use bit here on the Ensignette No 2 Alloy, it is this warning.
As far as I'm aware some early versions of the Ensignette need these spring clips to hold the roll of film in place. However early on Ensign designed some alloy built in spool holders which held the roll of film without the need for the additional springs, hence the red warning sticker you will find inside many Ensignettes.
The photograph above, shows these new alloy spool holders fitted to the Ensignettes.
As well as the body serial number being stamped on the camera back, it is also found on the main body too. These days that can be useful as you can tell if the camera is a 'Bitsa' or not, as it is obvious with the numbers, as to whether the camera and the back originally belonged to each other or not!
A further point of interest on this particular example is the retailers plaque attached to the camera back.
It was common practice in the early years of the last century for dealers or should I say retailers, if sounding more in keeping with the times, to place a little plaque with their name on it, somewhere on the camera. This was very common in Great Britain especially on Brass and Mahogany plate cameras. Germany too also used this idea. Later transfers were placed inside the camera by the major retailers. Lets have a closer look.
J Lizars were a major Scottish Photographic manufacturer and retailer, right from the early days of the Brass and Mahogany plate camera. Founded in around 1830 in Glasgow by a John Lizars an Optician. They became a major player producing microscopes, magic lanterns, telescopes, eyeglasses, as well as barometers and thermometers and of course cameras, their Challenge cameras being perhaps the most well known. I have a black Leica I with their name engraved on the bottom plate. So, they were a very big fish in Scotland as retailers, manufacturers and designers, in their prime around the time this Ensignette was made, they had retail shops in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paisley, Greenock and Aberdeen. In England they had a shop in Liverpool, a great centre of photography at the time and they even had a shop in Northern Ireland, located in Belfast. They still operate as Opticians in Scotland but are now called Black and Lizars.
Lets look at what we have got with this little camera. The shutter has three speeds, 20, 40, and 60th of a second plus B and T. They are controlled by a little lever that travels over a curved plated plate. The speeds are easy to read, engraved and filled in with white enamel over black, the best combination to read anything!
The aperture iris is controlled by a plated arrow, the apertures available are f11, 16, 22, and 32. The iris is continuous, so you can fine tune the large gap between 11 and 16 finely controlling your exposure quite easily, if you so wish. The lens is described as an Achromatic Meniscus lens of of course f11.
The plated viewfinder is tucked away neatly for the portrait orientation but can be swung out when you want it for landscapes, very neatly done.
Now being produced from an alloy the No 2 Ensignette is much lighter than the old brass version weighing in at only 207 g, or roughly 7 1/4 ounces if you prefer.
I really like the design of these Houghtons Ensignette cameras. When you think that the design was patented in 1907 and put into production in 1909. It is said that stocks were built up throughout 1909 and it was put on sale everywhere just before Christmas! Clever marketing is not a new thing then!
It continued to be produced until the early 1930's as the 127 film version Vest Pocket Ensign. Mr Magnus Niell the cameras Swedish designer must have been very proud of his invention, not many designs stay in production for so long, but the Ensignette lived on for decades even after production stopped. Even Kodak still made film for it until the 1950's and other British and Europeans film manufacturers kept on with Ensinette sized films until the 1960's and even the 1970's. That is pretty good going, for a cheap simple snapshot camera from before World War 1.
I personally prefer the later alloy versions over the brass ones. For some reason they feel more tactile, of course they are much lighter in weight. There are so many variations and models that if you are a collector, these must be the ultimate camera to collect. Of course it is much easier now with eBay to put together a substantial collection. When I collected them it took me two decades to find these cameras at auction sales, antique fairs, camera fairs and charity shops etc. Today, via the internet, providing of course you have the funds, a good collection could be put together in a couple of months!
A gentleman called Adrian Richmond was the main collector of the day, he was a member of the PCCGB and wrote many articles about Ensign cameras, and collated body numbers of Ensinettes, I remember sending him a lot of body numbers years ago, though I never saw any conclusion regarding the body numbers, but that might have been published after I left the club. There is a website of his online, but it seems a bit incomplete these days.
I once found a plated luxury Ensignette at an auction viewing held by Tennants of Leyburn. As I was pretty clued up about Ensignettes, I knew that it was a very rare version, so I went to bid for it the next day. The usual general antique dealers who bought the occasional old camera, dropped out after £50, but there was a bidder on the telephone who I could not shake off, the camera just kept going up and up so I just kept bidding. I had drawn all my savings out the day before, just in case! I bailed out at just over £800, all that I had, and it went the next bid to the gentleman on the telephone ! Of course there was probably only one other man in the country that knew how rare that camera was............
This particular Ensignette No 2 featured in this post, was bought at a PCCGB camera fair in 2001at Allwoodley Leeds where I had my usual stall. The camera was for sale at £40, I eventually bought it for £30, a fair and right price at the time. Today on eBay there are three for sale all around the same price, so then, no real increase in the last 25 years, it was a good job I was not buying it as an investment! Just with inflation, that £30 would have been worth £65 today ! So the moral of this little tale is buy because you like it, not because you think it will be worth a fortune one day, it most likely will not! If it is, that is just a bonus.
Okay, that is about it for our look at the Houghtons Ensignette No 2, alloy bodied version.
If there is some interest, we can look at some other Ensignettes in the near future, delving a little deeper into the camera and its history. Please let me know in the comments section. Give the article a like if you like it, please feel free to subscribe if this type of content is your sort of thing, it all helps the blog !
Take care,
Phil
Oh, I forgot to mention, just look how similar the design is to the Ansco strut camera featured a few posts ago!
Some sort of influence one way or the other?
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