Ensign Popular Reflex - Restoration

Jul 2, 2015
1 min read

As some of you may or may not know, I love restoring or modifying old cameras.

Ensign Popular Reflex

I bought this camera and it was in a sorry state :/ When I work on a camera I try to keep them as original as possible, but this was so deteriorated it deserved a new lease of life :)

So the original leather was stripped revealing this beautiful Mahogany underneath. After lots of sanding and a few coats of oil it looked amazing. It needed new bellows and a new viewing hood, they were made from red book binding material. All metal parts were stripped of the original paint and resprayed mat black and a final coat of mat lacquer. The brass was also stripped of it's black gloss and left as brass. I ordered new shutter curtain material from Japan and made new curtains and CLA'd the shutter.

The hardest part was finding a roll back to fit the ensign's back, but my luck was in as I found one on the famous auction site for a bargain.

With the Taylor Hobson 5.75" f/4.5 lens I can not wait to use this in anger esp. for some shallow DOF portraits...

Before