A series looking at three British Bakelite folding strut cameras of the Art Deco era
Rajar No.6 (1929)
✅ Type: Folding Strut Camera
✅ Material: Black Bakelite body with metal fittings
✅ Film Format: 120 roll film (6×9cm negatives)
🔹 Key Features:
- One of the first Bakelite-bodied folding cameras.
- Utilised a strut mechanism, allowing the lens and shutter assembly to extend outward when opened.
- Basic meniscus lens and simple shutter, designed for amateur photographers.
- Lightweight and durable, taking advantage of Bakelite’s mouldability.
The APeM Rajar No.6 was a camera of a common design of the era; the folding strut camera, where a lens board is projected out from the camera body with the support of four struts that lock into position, revealing light tight bellows. This convenient and portable camera type was usually a reasonably priced snapshooters camera. The optics would not set the world on fire, but would provide decent results in good light.
The premium camera phenomenon
One uncommon feature of this model is that it is made of plastic. In fact, the APeM Rajar No.6 of 1929 was the world’s first folding strut camera to have an all synthetic plastic body. It was offered as a premium camera; a freebie in exchange for coupons usually acquired with a smoking habit. An advertisement in John Bull of 22nd June 1929 by B.D.V. Cigarettes offered the Rajar No.6 in exchange for 200 coupons. Coupons were included in packets of cigarettes. When the smoker had inhaled and coughed their way through enough tabs to acquire 200 coupons, they could send the coupons off to be exchanged for the camera, or indeed other items in the Godfrey Phillips gift book.
The camera was valued at two pounds and two shillings and described somewhat imaginatively as ‘the type used by press photographers’. The advert highlighted the ‘handsome’ finish and that ‘all nickel parts chromium plated’. Handling the Rajar No.6, it’s no doubt a cheap device, and it’s a dishonest description making it into something it clearly was not.
Bakelite beginnings
It’s an anonymous introduction to a revolutionary material too. No mention is made of the black synthetic plastic material from which the camera is moulded; phenol formaldehyde or the more common term Bakelite.
This folding strut camera is a curious mix of a traditional, tried and tested type of camera made with a new material. The usual materials for the structure of the well-established folding strut camera design had been wood and metal, with a leather covering for the better models. All these materials had been worked and made by human beings for millennia. Bakelite though was just over two decades old.
Though the Rajar No.6 is a cheap camera, it has a coherent design, inherited from earlier cameras. For example, the lens board and struts echo the design from APeM’s vest pocket sized camera made of metal and leather. The designers of the Rajar have used one of the advantages of mouldable plastic and created a unique tight crosshatch textured breastplate shape for the lens board. It’s a good looking thing and shouts Art Deco to the rooftops with simple straight lines on the camera back, a stylish triangular nameplate with using a typical font of the era. Despite Bakelite having to be moulded quite thick to gain strength, placing the camera on my digital scales it weighs in at a mere 423 grammes.
Sadly, on a functional level there are few similarities to the vest pocket model. This is clearly a budget product. The user is limited to a fixed f/12 aperture, a fixed focus Meniscus lens and fixed shutter speed of around 1/50th second. There is a T mode however if you fancy having a go at long exposures.
Patented fastener
The camera back is secured to the body using a design patented by Cecil Kershaw and Amalgamated Photographic Manufacturers Ltd. (Kershaws of Leeds were formerly an independent manufacturer of cameras, cine and other optical equipment).
From the patent description “According to the invention, the fastening means comprise wire or other members pivotally connected to the opposite ends of one part of the casing and adapted to embrace and retain the other part in position thereon. In an embodiment of the invention, the camera case, which may be made in moulded material, such as is sold under the registered Trade Mark 85 v 2 324,831 ” bakelite “, has pivotally connected to each of the opposite ends of one of its parts or halves one of a pair of wire members adapted to be swung over the adjacent end of the other part of the case so, as to embrace it and’ hold the parts in position one upon the other.”
In shorthand, metal clips connected to the main camera body embrace the film back. It’s simple but effective.
Rajar Film
The camera produced eight 6×9cm exposures on special Rajar No.6 film rolls. Rajar Ltd of Cheshire were also a partner in APeM, and the aim was for owners of the camera to be locked into buying Rajar’s film on a unique spool exclusively made for this camera. Fortunately, the film on the spool was the common 120 film, so enterprising folk made an adapter for the camera so that standard 120m film from any make could be used.
It is still possible today to adapt the camera to use 120 film, but my copy’s bellows are riddled with pinholes, so I won’t be pursuing that idea. Also, the chrome struts on this camera are usually in poor condition too and the metal parts of the camera generally have tarnished and corroded over time. However, the simple shutter usually still works and the time defying Bakelite still looks good.
[…] The Bakelite folding strut 120 rollfilm camera was a uniquely British endeavour and a brief yet significant moment in camera history. Let’s start this series with the APeM Rajar No.6. […]