Back in 1902, Hugo Schrader started Plaubel & Company in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Schrader had done his apprenticeship at Voigtländer and later worked for one of the more innovative German camera makers; Dr Rudolf Krügener. In fact, he married Dr Krügener’s daughter, Ruth.
You may wonder why a chap named Schrader would call his firm by a different name. The answer is as simple as it is odd. The Plaubel name comes from Karl Plaubel, Hugo Schrader’s brother-in-law. Apparently, Schrader chose it because he thought it was easier to remember than “Schrader”.
The Plaubel camera company became one of Germany's most respected photographic manufacturers, known for high-quality press cameras, large-format cameras, and later the famous Makina medium-format rangefinders. The firm's history spans more than a century.
Plaubel started by manufacturing lenses (including the Anticomar, Heli-Orthar and Supracomar lines) and selling other firms' cameras to augment its income – though these cameras would nearly always go out the door with a Plaubel lens or two.
Around 1909-1910, Plaubel began producing its own cameras – and in 1912 it introduced the camera that would define its reputation: the Plaubel Makina. The Makina was a compact folding press camera with scissor-strut bellows construction. Over the following decades it evolved into one of Europe's best professional cameras for the press.
During the Second World War, the factory was heavily damaged by Allied bombers. But the firm recovered, resumed making cameras and introduced its Peco line of monorail view cameras – which became highly regarded among studio and architectural photographers for their precision engineering and exceptional build quality.
Curiously, it also made the VeriWide 100 – an ultra-wide-angle medium format camera. The Veriwide 100 was designed around a fixed 47mm f/8 Schneider Super-Angulon lens, giving an angle of view of nearly 100°.
It made seven 6x10cm negatives on a roll of 120 film, with an angle of view roughly equivalent to an 18–20 mm lens on a 35mm camera but with the image quality advantage of 120 Roll film.
It was introduced in 1959 in collaboration with the New York photographic distributor, Burleigh Brooks, Inc. Production ran until 1965 and, depending on who you believe, between 2,000 and 5,000 were made.
In 1975 Hugo Schrader’s son, Goetz Schrader, sold Plaubel to the Japanese Kimio Doi Group. Although the company retained the Plaubel name and the German factory, camera development largely shifted to Japan.
The most famous result of this new ownership was the new Plaubel Makina 67, introduced in 1978. Unlike the original German Makina cameras, it was a sophisticated 6x7 cm folding rangefinder camera equipped with a superb Nikkor 80mm f/2.8 lens and built-in metering.
The metering was a TTL (through-the-lens) match-needle system, which used a semi-transparent mirror just behind the shutter to divert a small amount of the light to a silicon photodiode. The photographer would change the shutter speed or aperture until the meter indicated correct exposure.
Because the Kimio Doi Group did not own a factory, the cameras were made under contract. Early development prototypes (called the Makinette 67) were produced in the German factory, but the production Makina 67 was all Japanese.
Konica’s chief designer, Yasuo Uchida, led the design team with assistance from Professor Udo M Geissler of the industrial design department of the Technical University of Munich.
It seems that Uchida did his best to persuade Doi to use a Konica lens for the camera. However, Doi had already paid Nikon for the development of the 80mm f/2.8 lens specially for the Makina 67. Uchida then asked for a copy of the lens for testing, and legend has it that he was blown away by the results.
In late 1981, the Makina W67 arrived. It was essentially the same camera, but with a wide-angle 55mm f/4.5 Nikkor lens. It was followed in 1984 by the Makina 670, which was a modified Makina 67 that could use either 120 or 220 film.
There was also a Makina 69W Proshift that had a 47mm Schneider Super-Angulon and made eight 6x9cm exposures per roll of 120 film. The lens was mounted on a sliding flange, which allowed for perspective control in the same manner as shifting the front standard of a view camera.
Early production was done by Konica or Copal (there is a lot of uncertainty about this). But it seems certain that in 1981 production shifted to Mamiya, where it remained until production ended for all models in 1986 due to rising costs.
In all, some 24,500 cameras were made across all four models, though the standard “67” accounted for 17,000 of them. Plaubel continued to make its famous monorail cameras in Germany until finally closing its doors in 2017.
Among film photographers, the Makina 67 remains one of the most sought-after medium format cameras. Today, a Plaubel Makina 67 in good working condition sells for considerably more than it did when new – even after adjusting for inflation.
Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras, as well as his book A Brief History of Photography.
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