Tower Reflex III
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I received this camera as a gift from a family member some time ago. It was a bit of a mystery at first as the name-plate is missing and I was unable to find any other markings naming the manufacturer. But the camera had the look and feel of a store-brand, so I flipped through McKeown's to the Sears section and there it was. The camera is a Sears Tower Reflex III, manufactured in Germany in the 1950's. I was lucky, the shutter release (grey button below the taking lens) is rather distinctive, which made the camera easy to identify. A nice thing about this camera is that it takes 120 film which I have in ample supply. While I call it a TLR, this camera is what others refer to a a "pseudo-TLR". While the taking lens can be focused, it is not coupled to the viewing lens.
There isn't much out there on this camera, which is not surprising considering it was a budget, store-branded camera. I did however find a listing for the camera in an old Sears catalog. As you can see the camera sold for around $35, which would be about $295 today based on inflation. While not the cheapest camera offered by sears, it was definitely much more affordable than the $350 professional Rolleiflex.
The camera has a decent set of features for a low-cost camera. The lens can be focused albeit only by guessing the distance to the subject. The Westar lens has an aperture range of 3.7-16. The Pronto shutter provides four speeds between 1/50 and 1/200 along with bulb. Like many low-cost TLRs of the era the waist-level viewfinder is wonderfully bright but distorted at the edges. Since this type of viewfinder doesn't always work all that well that well in the bright sun, I framed by a mix of guesswork and through the use of the "action" wire frame finder.
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I got better results than I expected, the lens was fairly sharp provided I focused correctly. As I mentioned earlier the camera is scale-focus only, so I had to rely on my best guess when setting the distance. Being a fairly bright day I was able to stop down which helped to increase depth of field.
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I took the camera along last week when my wife and I went cherry picking. The cherry tree and the garden pictured in this set are owned by the family members who passed the camera on to me, so it seemed a fitting place to test it out.
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Much to this chicken's disappointment, I did not have any food to give it, but at least it stood still long enough for me to snap a picture.
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Scary owl guarding the garden.
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Gate to one of the largest and nicest home vegetable gardens I have ever seen.
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Wind vain
TMax 400 @ ei 200
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