International Camera Museum : Blue Moon Camera and Machine

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Durst Duca

The Duca is a compact pocket camera, produced by Durst from 1947-1952. It makes twelve 24x36mm exposures on 35mm film that must be loaded into Agfa Karat-style cartridges. The camera has fairly simple controls, including two shutter speed settings, two zone focus settings, and a fixed aperture in a 50mm lens. The Duca has a unique oval design reminiscent of 1940s and 1950s Italian cine cameras.

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The Duca and brief history of Durst

One of our favorite camera-collecting customers, Marcus Heinrich, has done it again. He certainly enjoys helping us fill in some of the more esoteric gaps we have, in terms of the cameras we featured. This time he brought in a Durst Duca camera.⁠

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The history of the Durst company goes way back and, if you have spent enough time in the darkroom, their's is a name that is probably known to you. The Italian company was founded in 1936 by two brothers: Gilbert and Julius. Early on, the company worked on producing cameras as well as other photographic equipment. Their first camera was a medium format box-style camera called the Gil. This was later followed up by their 35mm cameras, one of which, was this Duca. The Duca looks like a miniature motion picture camera but it is, essentially, a small point-and-shoot. The Duca has two exposure settings: 1/30th and Bulb, two zone focus settings, and a fixed f/11 aperture. There is also a rare f/8 version out there somewhere as well. All the while, the camera exposes your typical 24x36mm frame size on to 35mm film loaded in Agfa Karat cassettes.⁠

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Durst didn't make many cameras and they also didn't make them for long. The company started focusing wholly on enlargers in the 1960s. Later, Durst introduced the world to the Lambda printer, one of the first digital laser printers to make c-prints. The company is still in business today, though their film camera and enlarger days are far behind them.