Ensign Selfix 8-20

Once upon a time ;-) the Ensign company of Walthamstow claimed to be "the biggest camera maker on the British Empire". Indeed, they had a long history of innovative, smart camera designs.

The Selfix was a series of solidly built cameras, made after the WWII and very well finished, so that they can easily compare, if not surpass, similar equipped cameras from their german counterparts of that era.

The "Selfix" brand had already been used before the War on some Ensign rollfilm cameras, and even some of those old designs were available again after 1945. The first actually new design to came off Ensign's drawing boards after the WWII was delayed until 1949, being it the Ensign 8/20.

The Ensign 8/20 was described a contemporary catalogue as "probably the finest roll-film camera, designed successfully to beat all the German competition both in optical and mechanical performance". The camera body is die-cast metal covered in black morocco leather. A tripod bush is in the centre of the base plate.

The camera has a 105 mm.f/3.8 Ross Xpres lens and an Epsilon 8 speed shutter. There is a standard cable-release socket but the flash sync socket is not standard and the special Ensign connectors are virtually unobtainable nowadays.

The top of the camera body is finished in satin chrome. In the centre of the top plate is the folding Albada finder. The Selfix 8/20 takes either 8 or 12 exposures on 120 rollfilm. There are folding masks in the back of the camera to allow either format to be selected and the viewfinder has markings for both. That was a clever idea, since most cameras with optional masks for changing negative size were dettachable and therefore became lost. In 1952 this camera was sold for £29 4s.

There are some variations of the 8/20 basic model.

The 8/20 Special has a characteristicly different top cover, designed to house a non-coupled rangefinder and a direct optical viewfinder. The latter has a sliding mask to accomodate for composition of 6x6 or 6x4.5 pictures. There is also a flash hot shoe on top of the rangefinder, and the Epsilon shutter that the 8/20 usually has is flash synchronized with standard 3mm plug. This camera was sold for £26 10s in 1953.

The 8/20 Autorange was the high-end model, made only during three years, between 1955 and 1958. It had a coupled rangefinder, and film plane focussing system. Today they go for around £1,000.

The cheapest version, on the other hand, was the Ensign Ranger, sharing the same body construction but was fitted with a cheaper lens, an Ensar 105/6.3, and also a reduced shutter, a 3-speed Trikon. This version also lacks the capability for dual format negatives, as there is no mask included negatives will always be 6x9 in size. In 1952, the camera was sold for £12 19s 6d.

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