Meet the Ansco Titan – a sleek 120 folder dressed for a formal Art-Deco ball! I don’t think it’s been reviewed on 35mmc, so here goes…
Born in 1948 (about the same time as I), the Titan – also known as the “Titan 20” – seriously upgraded the company’s “Standard Speedex” folder. The Titan’s fit, finish, materials, design and performance are superb.
At its introduction, comparable cameras cost up to $50, but the Titan rang in at almost $100 (equal to nearly $1,300 USD today). It may have been Ansco’s final in-house build, since the firm began importing and slightly modifying German cameras in 1952 (including my excellent 35mm Super Memar 2.0.)
The name “Titan,” however, doesn’t mean the camera is big. Here, it is shown below my Super Memar:
Though about the same weight, the Ansco Titan is comparatively petite, slips into a jeans pocket and produces bigger negatives! The camera’s name actually nods to its design and performance.
Great Specs
Higher spec’d than the Standard Speedex (which is still a great shooter), the Ansco Titan sports a 90mm f/4.5 coated, color-corrected, Anastigmat lens that is rumored to be a highly regarded Wollensak triplet.
It also offers continuously variable apertures from f/4.5 to f/22, and eight shutter speeds– from 1/400 to 1/2 sec plus B and T– that are selected with a large milled ring behind the lens. NOTE: Speeds engraved in black must only be used with SM-SF type flash bulbs, while those engraved in red work with any type. An ASA-bayonet flash-sync post is built into the shutter. And as with most vintage folders, it’s recommended that one set aperture and shutter speed before cocking the shutter.
The entire body feels like it was carved from solid metal, then wrapped in nubby black leatherette, and enhanced with a “lite” leather bellows. Its base-plate features a center-mounted metal tripod socket and two small metal nubs, shown below. (The nubs help stabilize the camera for display when the lens is extended):
And there’s a lot of modernist beauty in its brushed-chrome top deck:
The flaring knurled knobs and wedge-like viewfinder housing are Deco delights. The viewfinder itself appears to be Galilean, with two tiny curved glass elements producing a slightly wide-angle view.
Both knurled knobs turn with tight, but well-damped, smoothness. The rewind knob (on the right in the photo) lifts to insert and remove 120 rolls, but will not lift when the camera back is closed. The shutter button (here, on the left) and front-door release button (to the right of the viewfinder) activate sturdy spring mechanisms. When extended, the lens board is solidly firm. And the linkages triggered by the shutter button also seem well-built and unlikely to bend or break (unlike those on some Kodaks I’ve owned).
The only thing on its minimalist back door is the film-number window, which I covered with black tape during my tests:
And on one end, an arrow-shaped latch helpfully points downward, so there’s no confusion about which way it slides to open the camera. A raised nub on the latch makes sliding it easy (which is nice since my latch needs a firm downward push to release the back):
The camera back also closes with a secure snap. No accidental popping open here.
But Oh, That Zone-Focusing Scale!
The Ansco Titan’s real party bling, though, is its clever, color-coded, Zone-Focusing Scale. This photo illustrates how that lovely rainbow works:
Here, the lens is manually focused to 15 feet (bottom-center) and the aperture set to f/8, which is engraved in red on the color-coded aperture scale (above-center). The corresponding red brackets around the focusing post show that the effective depth-of-field will be from around 12 to 24 feet. Without moving anything, one can also see that the depth-of-field if one switches to f/11 (marked in green) will be about 9 to 38 feet. Closing down to f/16 (blue) produces a DoF from about 8.5 feet to just short of infinity. And f/22 (black brackets) goes from about 7 feet to beyond infinity (to catch whatever lives out there).
Some have called this Zone-Focusing Scale a gimmick. But I wish more camera controls were this beautiful and clear.
NOTE: The camera’s pocketable manual also features a two-page table of precise depths-of-field when the lens is set to its 11 engraved distances (from 3.5 feet to infinity).
But What About the Pix?
Full disclosure: I bought the camera about 20 years ago, immediately popped my last roll of Kodak T400CN 120 in the camera, and sent the results off to a lab.
Below are two pairs of photos from that roll (digitized with my Olympus C-8080 WZ digicam). On the left in each pair is the image straight from the Olympus (after conversion to monochrome, since T400CN negatives were C-41 processed, and returned from the lab with a color cast). And on the right, is the image with its grayscale tones restored to their full potential range of values using the Levels histogram sliders:
Sadly, I rather squandered the roll’s 12 exposures by taking multiple copies of each image… just to be sure one came out. As it turned out, that was completely unnecessary! (And yes, I think a lab-tech’s hair must have fallen on the second photo’s negative during processing.)
But the Ansco Titan can definitely produce nice 6×6 negs!
When Buying a Ansco Titan
Beyond normal lens and function checks, a couple things are worth noting. I initially thought the T and B shutter speeds on my Ansco Titan didn’t work. But they did when I triggered them with a cable release screwed into the shutter housing. And after that, they also worked with the shutter button! So be sure to check that before buying.
And on the edge of my camera’s film-advance knob, a tiny area of brushed-chrome coating had flaked off of the aluminum base metal. So if cosmetics matter to you, give the chrome-work a good look-see.
Conclusions
Of course, many vintage 6×6 folders have higher specs than the Ansco Titan. But it’s currently closing on the “bay” for from $50 to $75 USD. Great pocketable bang-for-the-buck! And just as one feels better stepping out in snappy clothes, having a beautiful camera in hand also doesn’t hurt!
–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass., writer and avid amateur photographer.
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