Dallmeyer wide angle 2 3/8 inch lens with yellow daylight filter: Lieutenant Alan Queale, Official Photographer, BCOF

Dallmeyer wide angle Anastigmat 2 3/8 inch lens mounted on a square lens plate for use with the 2x3 Speed Graphic camera. There are two steel pins on either side of the lens, onto which an improvised and removeable surround made of pink dental resin sits, with two holes for the pins. A oversized yellow glass filter with an alloy surround is fixed into the resin surround, allowing the filter to sit above the lens.

The lens and filter assembly is stored in a square box.

Alan Queale was born in Boonah, Queensland on 16 November 1908 and enlisted in June 1940. Under service number QX6717 he served in the Middle East with 2/1 and 2/2 Ordnance Stores as a technical storeman from September 1940 until January 1943, reaching the rank of sergeant.

During his time in the Middle East, he used a simple Ensign Double 8 still camera to privately produce six albums of photographic portraits and studies of buildings, a format he would reproduce when he worked in Japan. Arriving back in Australia, he was transferred to 2 Base Ordnance Depot in Melbourne before being transferred to Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU) in March 1944, serving with them in New Guinea (an experience he found "rubbish"). He applied for a transfer to the Military History Section in July 1945, where he worked with No 2 Military History Field Team in New Guinea until February 1946.

Queale worked with the Military History Section (MHS) from 1946-47 in Japan, photographically documenting the activities of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) and aspects of Japanese life post-war, including the demilitarisation of the country, before being made the Officer in Charge (with the rank of lieutenant) of the MHS from February 1947 to March 1949. His photos from his service in the Middle East as well as Japan are searchable under his name on the AWM database.

After he was discharged from the Army in August 1949, Queale continued to take and collect photographs, and became well-known in Queensland for his work as an amateur historian and collector of art and artifacts. His work is notable for its unusually fine aesthetic values, as well as for what it reveals about Australia’s view of Asia in the immediate post-war period.

This Dallmeyer 2 3/8 inch wide angle lens is mounted to a steel lens plate designed to fit the quick change lens mechanism on a Graflex 2 ¼ inch x 3 ¼ inch Miniature Speed Graphic press camera. All the user had to do was slide the lens release upwards and replace the lens. The owner has made up a filter holder for the tiny lens out of dental resin.