"STAT" camera. What is it?

[Mike Kennedy]

Doing a bit of early morning ebay surfing and found this item.
Agfa Grevaert Repromaster MK3 Photostatic item #220005887550

I guess that if you need/want one and live in Michigan then here's your camera.

Mike

[ann]

this piece of equipment was used to made half tone images , among other types.

I.E. your year book photos for example where sent into the company who took those images and the lay out and used a stat camera to copy the page and then sent that film to the printers .

There are some photographers who used that camera to make copies of photos and then silk screened them onto other papers, painting drawing, etc.

Most of these cameras are very large and need a "darkroom" of their own .

I am sure others out there will have a more detail explanation, but this should give you a bit of information.

[lee]

Ann has it right. Stats were copies of the original art work in a photographic form. They could be line art or halftones. Stats were generally paper copies that could be positive or reverses. I used to work for a manufacture of Stat Cameras. The company was called VGC. These had their own little darkroom and a built-in processor. You could get a dry copy of your paste up in about 2 min and you could enlarge it up to 300% and reduce it to 25% in one shot. One of the deaths of this type of camera was the agreements the companies had with companies like Kodak and others ran out and their were other companies there to supply paper both pos and neg and filmss that was cheaper. The quality of the material went down and people quit buying the materials. Then the whole desk top imagesetter thing took off.

lee\c

[HerrBremerhaven]

Often the lenses and shutters in such cameras can be good for use in Ultra Large Format projects. These are also still useful for those who want to make large negatives for contact printing, though perhaps not always that convenient. There are some of these repro cameras, or vertical cameras, still in usage. However, the majority of layout work for commercial printing has gone to computer set type and images.

While I did not look into that specific model, some of these had a vacuum back for the film. There might be some interesting parts, or someone might want to try getting it to work. Depending upon how old this is there might still be some parts and spares available from AGFA. I would expect it to be quite heavy, so even local pick-up could mean some difficulty taking such a thing home.

Ciao!

Gordon

[jp80874]

Of interest to at least two of us is that the 213mm Repromaster lens from a scrap stat camera (say that fast) has the coverage to blanket 7x17. We are hoping it has the depth of field at f 9.25 to f45 to make a very wide angle landscape $20.00 lens. A "Normal" lens for 7x17 is 466mm.
see http://www.apug.org/forums/forum147/27261-7x17-making.html
Tests to follow on both sides of the pond.

John Powers

[wilsonneal]

I ran a Stat camera for many years in the graphic arts industry when I was in High School and College. They could be a lot of fun for people with a creative streak. The places I worked made camera-ready artwork for newspapers and magazines. In the days before the Mac, enlarging or reducing type or artwork required these cameras.

I also learned to use a CompuGraphic typesetting machine during this time.

I used to enjoy having people lay down on the Stat camera under the lens for ULF portraits in half-tone or using the high contrast materials.

Knowing what interesting and fun tools these are makes it especially painful when I see one go begging on eBay or craigslist for $150 or something. I just don't have room to keep one of these, or I would have one.