TLR Cameras from the USA (Mostly)

(Some of these are US-rebadged Japanese TLRs)

The heyday of the American TLR was from 1945 for about seven years. The collapse of Germany and Japan encouraged resurgent American manufacturers to develop several new models for the home market with Kodak, Ansco and Ciroflex leading the way.

Pushed by Kodak and its desire to drive the world to its 620 film, several US makes went down this route. Rick Oleson, a very amiable American with whom I have corresponded, sets out the story rather well in his brief online history of the American TLR:

For the collector, American TLRs benefit (and for the user, they suffer) from another idiosyncrasy: there was a sense of uncertainty on the part of manufacturers as to which type of 2 ¼ film their cameras ought to use. Kodak, repeating their previous "Bantam" misjudgement on a (physically) larger scale, overestimated their ability to impose their will upon the marketplace, decided that their unique ‘620’ film size was the wave of the future, and designed all of their 2¼ format cameras accordingly. A few others followed suit, producing cameras that are virtually worthless today due to the unavailability of 620 film; but the majority took the more traditional 120 route. Not wanting to be caught on the wrong side of the fence, Argus and Universal designed their cameras to accept both types. As easy as this was to do, it’s amazing that everybody didn’t do it (Universal seems a particularly unlikely leader in this respect, as all of their prewar cameras had been intentionally made incompatible with all existing film types in order to create a captive film market).

So effectively there was a period of around five or six years when some in the US went the 620 route and then the wave of German/Japanese 120s engulfed them! As a historical note, a number of British manufacturers also tried to hedge their bets in this period, producing TLRs which could handle both formats.

Of the three major American makes listed above, Kodak went for well-engineered simplicity - geared lenses in a very heavy body. Ansco, as well as some very basic pseudo-TLRs, produced the astonishing - and arguably over-engineered - Ansco Automatic Reflex.

The Ciroflex series is interesting particularly because, although they were the cheapest (and in my opinion generally nastiest) of the three makes, the basic design was sold on to Graflex when Ciroflex cut their losses. Graflex engineered the 22 models, which have a much more robust and quality feel to them. The Ciroflex also spawned the Dejur Reflex, presumably on some kind of licensing deal just prior to the sale to Graflex; this is also a more solid-feeling model, though not in the Graflex' league. Ciroflex fans, please don't send me abusive emails - it's just my opinion!

Sears are a special case, because they bought in and sold so many rebadged German/Japanese cameras under their "Tower" brand. So I have created a separate section all about these at the bottom of this page. They don't really belong under "American", but I think they do need to be together, so here they stay!

On a different note, One unusual camera in my collection is the huge 4"x5" plate Gowlandflex built in tiny numbers by a West Coast glamour photographer. Details of mine are to be found are at my Gowlandflex page.

If you find any errors on this page or have any camera I might be interested in, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. Click on the small "thumbnail" pictures below to go to larger ones..