#norca

The most amusing part of the Braun Norca, a folding medium-format camera, is the shutter release. The shutter itself is mounted on the lens, but the release button is on the main body of the camera - and on mine the button’s cover has been lost to the mists of time, leading to it being quite uncomfortably pointy. In order to connect the button to the shutter release, a long bar goes from the body to the lens. This bar can, and does, get lost when the camera is unfolded and you frequently have to unfold it again in order to make sure it’s in the right spot to hit the shutter lever.

That wound up defining the camera for me. It looks like an incredibly advanced - or at least advanced for the era - camera, but it also feels like they didn’t quite get the bugs worked out before selling it to the public. That little metal bar is a solution, but it’s not a good solution, and probably not the solution that they actually wanted before they sold it. It’s similar to how at least part of the view from the viewfinder is always blocked by the lens. Putting the viewfinder on the body is modern and cool, but they didn’t do it quite right. The very dim window to see what exposure you’re on might be a result of cheap plastic and old age conspiring against me, but the end result is the first time I ran film through it I wasted half a roll. It does have a neat little door to prevent you from accidentally getting a light leak in this spot, which is very thoughtful.

Flaws give a camera character, however, and if nothing else this thing has ample character.

What else does it have? It has a 105mm Braun-Praxar lens, which is either at f/8 or f/16 - helpfully labeled with a little cloud or sun, respectively. The most amusing part of this is that f/16 is accomplished by moving a little ring behind the lens to step it down, because complication is not in the recipe here. Macro also is not in the recipe, as the nearest it can focus is eight feet, and you’re going to have to guess if you’re in focus or not. Old cameras were made for people who could tell how far things were apart from each other.

For film I went with Kodak Ektar 100, both because it’s a well liked colour film and because it was the only medium format film I had on me at the time, both excellent reasons for choosing it. Because this camera takes wide images that are also absolutely massive - the negatives are 6x9, and you can get eight shots on a roll, so you use your film up very quickly.

I quickly discovered one very important thing - there was a light leak somewhere. It seemed like it might be a fresh one, given that it didn’t show up early in the roll. Honestly, it’s likely my fault, given that I was using the camera instead of keeping it on a shelf, and this probably made some of the ancient leather crack. That’s unfortunate.

Also unfortunate is that I’m clearly not great at judging distance and, as a result, the focus was frequently very soft. The sheer age of the camera also likely didn’t help in this case - this thing is old - but the result was a very soft focus, as though Susan Lucci was trying to get another Daytime Emmy. The lens wasn’t bad, and if something was in the distance it could be pretty clear, but it’s definitely a flaw and a flaw that is at least partially on me.

The two problems had an unexpected effect of giving a very pleasing image. Honestly, if there’s a shoegaze band out there looking to shoot an album cover, I’ll gladly do it with this camera. The combination of softness and bright squiggly lines makes for the perfect image to sell fuzzy distorted guitars. The many flaws combined wound up making an image that was kind of great all things considered.

These issues were not always a problem, I got an excellent sunset shot of a tree from it as well, which showed what the camera could do under ideal conditions, and when I could just set it to infinity without having to judge where anything was. I want to do more landscapes with this, and not just because it has a massive 6x9 negative. It can do them.

I’m not going to reach for it most of the time, because you have to be extremely aware of its flaws if you want to get a good image out of it, and it's definitely not for every situation. I'm also going to have to find out where that pesky little leak is. But in the right situation, with the right subject and a bit of knowledge about its many flaws, this camera will do something nothing else will.

Next up: Another classic Canon.