C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
View profile →rangefinder-35mm
The Bell & Howell Foton (1948-1950) was a premium American 35mm rangefinder camera with an integrated spring-wound motor that automatically advanced the film and cocked the shutter after each exposure. Manufactured by Bell & Howell - a company then better known for 16mm movie projectors and cameras - the Foton was sold at a price of roughly $700 (approximately $9,000 in 2026 dollars), positioning it above the Leica IIIC in the US market. It carried a fixed 50mm f/2 Cooke Amotal Anastigmat lens and featured a coupled rangefinder integrated with the viewfinder. Production was short - approximately two years - and the camera was a commercial failure. Surviving examples are scarce.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
View profile →BW
Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
View profile →BW
Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Labs in our directory that process 35mm film.
Before you buy used
About this camera
A spring-wound motor-drive 35mm rangefinder from 1948 - the most ambitious American camera of the postwar era.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm |
| Lens | 50mm f/2 Cooke Amotal Anastigmat (fixed) |
| Years | 1948-~1950 |
| Shutter | ~1/25s - ~1/200s + B, leaf |
| Meter | None |
| Focus | Coupled rangefinder |
| Motor | Spring-wound, auto-advance after each frame |
| Battery | None (spring motor) |
| Body | Aluminum alloy, chrome finish |
Bell & Howell entered the still-camera market with the Foton as a prestige product intended to demonstrate American manufacturing capability in the premium photographic segment. The camera was engineered in-house and borrowed conceptually from Bell & Howell's movie-camera expertise - specifically the idea that automatic film transport was a desirable feature. The spring motor, wound by a key on the camera body, could advance approximately 8 frames before requiring rewinding.
The Foton's list price at introduction was reportedly around $700, at a time when a Leica IIIC cost roughly $300-350 and a working American's weekly wage was around $50. It did not sell. Bell & Howell discontinued the camera by around 1950 after modest production - exact numbers are not publicly documented. The company did not make another still camera for general consumers.
The Cooke Amotal lens was sourced from the Taylor, Taylor & Hobson (TTH) optical works in England, the same company that supplied cinema lenses to Hollywood productions. This gave the Foton a genuinely distinguished optical component that the price tag partly justified on paper.
The Foton is a document of postwar American optimism about domestic manufacturing. Bell & Howell believed that the combination of American industrial scale and the specific expertise in motorized film transport (drawn from cinema equipment) could compete at the top of the 35mm market. The calculation was wrong on price - the camera cost more than the market would pay - but the engineering was coherent. A spring-wound automatic advance in 1948 was a genuine engineering achievement.
For historians of American cameras, the Foton demonstrates the gap between what US manufacturers could build and what they could sell profitably. Germany's Leitz and Zeiss had decades of precision manufacturing tradition, distribution networks, and photojournalist endorsements that no American company could replicate by announcement. The Foton's failure was also, in part, a timing failure: it arrived after Leica had already defined what a premium 35mm rangefinder was supposed to look and feel like.
The Cooke Amotal lens is considered optically respectable by those who have tested surviving examples - fast for the era at f/2, reasonably sharp stopped down.
C41
Kodak Portra 160 is a professional C-41 color negative film with fine grain, soft contrast, and natural color.
View profile →C41
Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
View profile →Bell & Howell Foton
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