The KW Reflex Box
This German-made SLR was presented in the style of a standard box camera
To anyone familiar with cameras, the term ‘Reflex Box’ sounds like an oxymoron. Generally speaking, reflex and box occupy opposite ends of the spectrum of camera types. Box cameras are ultra-simple, very cheap and aimed at the mass market; reflex cameras usually cost a lot, have plenty of different settings, and are the weapon of choice for enthusiasts or professional photographers.
The Reflex Box was made in 1933 by the German firm Kamera-Werkstätten Guthe & Thorsch, a bit of a mouthful, usually shortened simply to ‘KW’. From one angle it looks just like a bog-standard box camera, but turn it on its side, open the shaded hood, and you have a single lens reflex, similar in appearance to the larger format SLRs of the day.
Contemporary advertisements show the Reflex Box priced at around ten times that of a simple Kodak Brownie, but around a quarter what you would have had to pay for a good- quality medium format folder, such as one of the mid-range Zeiss Super Ikontas.
Users of standard box cameras in the 1930s would most likely have had contact prints made from their negatives; any number of old family photo albums will testify to this, with their uniform 6x9cm prints (2 ¼¼ x3 in). Those simple box cameras generally had single- element meniscus lenses, but the Reflex Box has an anastigmat, made up of four elements, and designed to correct some of the aberrations associated with single- element lenses. My guess is, if you owned one you were probably going to make enlargements rather than stick with contact prints.
Shutter speeds of 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100sec are selected using a lever rather than a dial. There are also ‘ T’ and ‘B’ options. Once the scene is composed, using a small built-in spirit level to ensure everything is straight, the shutter is triggered with a lever on the right of the body, to the sound of a satisfying clunk.
Before the arrival of the pentaprism, SLRs had to be used at waist level so that you could look down onto the focusing screen, which is shaded by the fold- out hood. You need the shade, as even at full aperture of f/4.5 the image isn’t bright. This is compounded, on my example, by the silvering on the mirror being in poor condition in places, so the image formed is reminiscent of those posters you see in opticians’ waiting rooms, illustrating the effects of macular degeneration: the central part of the image is poor compared with the periphery. Fortunately the lens itself is fine and this doesn’t show on the negative, but I stuck to static subjects so I could take my time taking aim.