Baker and Rouse Falling Plate 3 1/4x4 1/4

This camera was given to me by Barrie Bunning, a colleague from the Melbourne Camera Club

It is a falling plate camera that was probably distributed, if not  made by, Baker and Rouse who became the Kodak agents in Australia. The camera may be an English import but there is no identifying information on the body.

It was meant for the Dedicated Amateur given the control available for taking shots

I have made up some plates and it works.

A Falling Plate camera uses either paper or glass plate holders that are loaded into the camera. There are twelve paper plates in this camera. So, unless you have a changing bag, you have 12 shots available to you when you take the camera out.

Each plate slides along two tracks and all are kept in place by the pressure spring which is driven by the plate on which it is fixed.

On top of the camera is a slider that allows a plate to release from the stack - note the two slots in the top of the plates. The released plate then falls down into the bottom of the camera body. The cavity for this can be seen just under the pressure plate.

You can control most things apart from focus.

Interesting is the Closeup system that introduces four different lens to cope with near objects.