The British Corfield Periflex cameras

[scsambrook]

Does anyone have a working Periflex I wonder? For those unfamiliar with this range of ingenious British cameras, look at http://www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk/Museum/CorfieldCameras/corfield.htm. They used the L39 Leica mount and register, but were focused by mean of a "periscope" which dropped into the light path between lens and film. The idea was that you got a Leica size body which could be focused precisely without the complexity of either a rangefinder or mirror mechanism. It seemed like a good idea at the time - early 1950s. I had two of the later more sophisticated models, both of which broke. Several times.

Their first lenses, trademarked "Lumar" were designed and made in the UK, but later there was an arrangement with Enna whose products were badged "Lumax". The brightest star was the 85mm f1.5, in Leica screw mount WITHOUT the coupling flange. Has anybody got one of those? I think that would be absolutely the most frustrating thing imaginable - !

[PaulC]

That's an interesting curiosity. Odd that they should be prone to breaking when the idea is so simple. They must have had awful lag between focusing and shooting after raising the periscope.

[Farside]

[scsambrook]

[PaulC]

Was the mechanics of launching a periscope in the later version any less complicated than swinging a mirror? If not, it would have become a bit pointless. The fingernail trigger sounds fun.

I agree that idea is ingenious if unsophisticated. I have seen - somewhere or other - a sort of periscope attachment used in a system for photographing slides in the lab. It might actually have been for use with a Leica (and it could well be on this site, somewhere). I can't remember the details.

[scsambrook]

PaulC makes a very good point about the complexity of the periscope and the point of going down that route.

The original rationale was to make a camera with the focusing accuracy of a "rangefinder" type without the need for the complicated mechanism which was quite beyond the means of Corfield to produce. The periscope was, certainly in its first version, much simpler to engineer and allowed the use of a body that could work with Leica lenses. Corfield recognised a potential demand for a Leica substitute (in the late 1940s and early 50s German cameras were virtually unobtainable in the UK) and it seems clear from the outset that he wanted to make his own lenses to go with it, whilst promoting the camera's ability to use any Leica lens then extant. His own engineering capacity was almost certainly not good enough to produce lenses with the necessary coupling flanges or cams, another reason for the "optical coupling" with the periscope.

The later "automatic" models were indeed more complicated, and probably little simpler than a mirror-reflex, but even in the late 50s the RF camera was still pretty much dominant in the market, outnumbering SLRs by a fair margin. Had Corfield not run into severe financial problems he might well have marketed a true SLR 35mm model - he did get a 6x6 into limited production before things ground to a halt.

The last models actually had a split-image rangefnder and some really neat interchangeable viewfinders which gave an SLR-effect when looking through them. Interesting, but ultimately yet another "masterpiece of misplaced ingenuity".