I bought two GB Kershaw 110s on eBay for £5 each, partly because £5 each. The other reason was that I had been told they were better than they had any right to be, and I wanted to find out whether the people saying that were right. They were right.
This is the writeup of a bitterly cold morning walk with one of them. I went out with FP4 Plus loaded in a camera with a single shutter speed of around 1/30 of a second and a choice of two apertures, and the air at minus three. The pictures that came back are genuinely good. I do not say that lightly about cameras that cost less than a pint and a half of beer.
What the Kershaw 110 is
The 110 is a folding camera made in Leeds between 1954 and 1957. It takes 120 roll film and gives you twelve frames of 6x6, and is about as basic as a 120 camera gets. The lens is a single-element meniscus, fixed focus, with a depth of field from roughly three metres to infinity. There are two apertures, f/11 and f/16, the latter selected by a small circular mask that flips into place when you slide a button. The shutter is a single-speed cock-and-fire mechanism, working out at about 1/30 of a second when I tested it with a phone shutter-speed app (some sources list 1/50, and at this end of the precision spectrum the difference is academic).
Some sources also describe the 110 as having an I & B shutter (Instant plus Bulb) with flash synchronisation. My particular example has neither. The shutter has only the single Instant setting and there is no flash socket on the lens. Whether this is a variant of the model or a difference between batches I cannot say, but if you find one with a B setting and a flash sync, you have the slightly fuller version. Mine is the stripped-back one.
The front pops open via a button on the top plate, and the bellows extend and lock into their working position ready for the shot. The film is advanced with a single knob using the red window on the back to count frames. Cock the shutter with the lever on the lens housing. Press the trigger button (also on the lens housing, which we will come back to). That is the whole user interface.
Mine cost £5. The other one I bought also cost £5. Both arrived in excellent condition for cameras pushing seventy years old. The leatherette is intact. The bellows are pinhole-free. The shutter on the one I used today had been a bit sticky on arrival, and I freed it up by taking the front element off and gently exercising the mechanism until the gum let go. The cleaning, such as it was, took twenty minutes.
The interesting history bit
The story behind the GB Kershaw badge is more interesting than the camera deserves.
The company was founded by Abram Kershaw in Leeds in the late 19th century, originally as A. Kershaw and Sons Ltd, making optical instruments. During the First World War the company opened a new factory in Leeds in 1916 for the production of rifle-sights and binoculars, which gives the Kershaw 110 a slightly unexpected lineage when you think about it. The lens you are holding is from a company that made gunsights.
In 1921, Kershaw joined an industry consortium called Amalgamated Photographic Manufacturers Ltd (APM), bringing together a number of British camera makers and film/plate/paper manufacturers. The strategy was the British answer to the kind of consolidation that would later produce Zeiss Ikon in Germany. It did not last. The film and plate side broke away in 1929 to form Apem Ltd, which eventually became part of Ilford. The remainder of APM became Soho Ltd around 1930, which is where the “Kershaw-Soho” name you sometimes see on collector sites comes from. Same company, different point in its corporate history.
The Second World War sent Kershaw back to military work, this time making aerial bomb-sights. Plenty of British camera makers had similar wartime stories. Optical know-how that could make a lens for a folding camera could also make a sight for a bomber.
The post-war folding cameras (the 110, the 630 and the 450) were made under the Kershaw-Soho name, and the company was later renamed GB Equipments Ltd. The cameras carried the G.B. Kershaw badge from that point. So the “GB” on your camera does not stand for Great Britain or anything as grand as that. It is simply the badge of the parent company, the way “VW” on the back of a Golf stands for Volkswagen. Less romantic but more accurate.
The company eventually stopped making cameras altogether. The reason was Cinemascope. The new widescreen cinema format had been introduced in 1953 and the British market was crying out for compatible projectors. Kershaw decided their optical engineering would be more profitably deployed on cinema projection than on folding cameras for the amateur market, and they pivoted. The Kershaw Division ended up as part of the Rank Organisation for some time afterwards. Your 110 is from the very last years of their camera-making life. By the time you were able to buy one new, the company was already looking at the door.
One last bit. Kershaw-Soho had a habit of naming their cameras after birds. The Curlew, the Penguin, the King Penguin, the Peregrine and the Raven are all in their catalogue. The directors were apparently keen birders. The 110, 630 and 450 are the exceptions because they are part of the budget line and were given numbers instead. I find the birder detail unreasonably charming.
The 110, the 630 and the 450
Three Kershaw folders from this period are worth knowing about. Worth getting the lineage right because the order in which they appeared is not quite what I assumed in the video.
The 110 came first, in 1954. The basic one. The one you are reading about. Fixed focus, single speed shutter, two apertures.
The 630 came next, in around 1955. It built on the 110 with a focusing lens, a proper iris aperture and a three-speed shutter with flash synchronisation. The lens housing on the 630 is quaintly marked “German Shutter” (the actual shutter is a Vario or similar). The 630 is the middle child of the family.
The 450 came last, in around 1956. It is the most advanced of the three, with a larger-aperture focusing lens and a proper iris, plus a choice of either a three-speed Vario shutter or a five-speed Velio shutter. Same body extras as the 630 (fold-out spool holders, a red window cover, a cable release socket, a shutter release on the edge of the folding door rather than on the lens). The 450 is the camera you would have bought if you were taking your photography slightly more seriously.
So the lineage is 110 → 630 → 450, with each step adding more capability. None of them is the best of the three by every measure. The 110 is the simplest and most foolproof. The 450 is the most flexible. The 630 sits between them. I have only used the 110 so far. The other two are now on the watch list.
The morning walk
I took the 110 out on a viciously cold morning in March. The temperature was minus three when I left the house. Frost on the fields. Sun low and bright. I had loaded the camera with Ilford FP4 Plus at box speed (ISO 125), which is what I always load when I do not have a specific reason to load something else. With a 1/30 of a second shutter and apertures of f/11 or f/16, FP4 in winter sun was a slightly aggressive choice. The sunny 16 rule with ISO 125 wants 1/125 at f/16, so 1/30 at f/16 is about two stops over. I was relying on the famous exposure latitude of black-and-white negative film to absorb the overexposure, which it did.
The first frame was a small pond surrounded by reeds. The light meter suggested f/6.3 at 1/30, which the camera could not give me. I went f/16 and accepted the overexposure. The negative came back dense but easy to print down.
The second frame was a tree standing on its own in the middle of a field, shot against a clear pale sky. I went f/16 again because of the bright background. The negative is the one I like best from the roll. The meniscus lens drops off markedly towards the edges of the frame but the centre is sharp enough, and the falloff actually frames the tree quite nicely. The character of a meniscus lens is that the centre is good and the edges are not, and once you accept that, you can compose for it.
The third frame was a pattern of hay bales (or silage bales) in a field. The geometry was the draw. The 110 did fine.
The fourth frame was a stile leading into another field. I left the aperture on f/11 because I had stopped thinking about it. The negative is slightly hot but still printable. Half the point of these cameras is that they reward not thinking too hard.
The fifth and sixth frames were of power lines because there are power lines everywhere in this part of the Severn Vale and you cannot get away from them. I went f/11 again. By this point I was wandering and not really metering. The cold was getting into my hands and the camera was small enough to operate one-handed when needed.
Twelve frames in total. The roll came out of the camera in maybe forty-five minutes of walking. There is no sit-and-compose with a 110. You see something and point the camera at it, then click. It is closer to a snapshot camera than to a deliberate-photography setup, and that is the right way to think about it.
The shutter button on the lens
The one design choice on the 110 that I would actually criticise is the placement of the shutter release. It sits on the lens housing rather than on the body. Pressing it applies a downward force on the front of the camera at the point furthest from your supporting hand, which is exactly where you do not want force at a 1/30 of a second shutter speed. The camera shake risk is real.
The workaround is to hold the body firmly with one hand and squeeze the shutter with the other, keeping the front of the camera braced against the pull. Or to use a tripod and a cable release, which the camera does not have a socket for, so that option is not actually open to you on the 110 (the 450 has a cable release socket and the 630 does too, but not the 110). Or to just accept some camera shake on some frames and pick the sharpest ones in the darkroom.
I get this in the comments on the video sometimes. “Use a tripod.” Yes, I know. With a 1/30 shutter on a wide-ish meniscus lens, a tripod would be the right answer for every frame. But that is also missing the point of what the camera is for. The 110 is meant to be the camera you reach for when you want to wander around taking medium format snapshots without thinking. If you tripod-mount it, you may as well take the Bronica.
Imperfection vs character
This is where I want to spend a paragraph because the 110 is the camera that crystallised something I think a lot about with vintage cameras.
The negatives from the Kershaw have visible imperfections. The corners go soft. The contrast at the edges is lower than the centre. The sharpness in the middle is good but not Zeiss-good. The frame edges occasionally show a hint of vignetting. All of these things are normal for a single-element meniscus lens. They are how the camera renders the world.
A lot of people on the vintage camera internet will look at those imperfections and call them character. I am not sure I agree with that broad usage. To me, character is when the imperfections are part of the design intent (or part of the limitations of the camera-as-built), and you compose to use them. If you frame your subject in the centre because you know the corners go soft, and the resulting picture has soft corners that frame the subject, that is character. The imperfection becomes a feature.
What is not character, in my opinion, is when you shoot with a camera that has a dirty lens, or aberrations from damage, or random imperfections you cannot account for, and the resulting picture has problems you did not know were going to be there. That is just damage. It might still produce an interesting picture occasionally but it is luck, not authorship.
The Kershaw 110, used within its limits and composed for its lens, produces pictures with character. That is a different thing from saying it produces flawed pictures. The flaws are baked into the design and you can plan for them.
Verdict
I am genuinely impressed with the Kershaw 110. £5 buys you a 1954 British folding camera that works and makes lovely 6x6 negatives on 120 film, and has weathered seventy years of indifferent storage somewhere in a drawer. The lens is what it is and the workflow is barely a workflow. You point and click. The exposure latitude of negative film does most of the rest.
If you are looking for a way into 120 film without committing real money to a TLR or a folder with a proper lens, the 110 is the camera. They are everywhere on eBay (search “Kershaw 110” or “G B Kershaw 110”) and they routinely sell for under £10. They mostly work or can be made to work with twenty minutes of attention. They take 120 film that you can still buy almost anywhere. They give you twelve 6x6 frames per roll.
You probably do not even need a light meter if you are happy to apply sunny 16 with a generous interpretation of the latitude of FP4 or HP5. The Kershaw makes the decision for you anyway. You have two apertures and one shutter speed. Pick the right aperture for the light and press the button.
The next outing on the channel was the Intrepid 4x5 Mk IV review, which is about as far in the opposite direction as it is possible to go on this channel. From a £5 folder to a £250 4x5 field camera in the space of one video. The variety is the point.
Get yourself a Kershaw if you have a fiver and a roll of FP4. You will not be disappointed.