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A folding bed camera is a folding camera with a lensboard which is mounted on a slide that is movable along rails on a plate. That way the camera's bellows can be expanded to its operating length. Usually this plate is the door which shuts the folded camera. Thus these doors are openable exactly 90 degrees. After opening the door the slide with the lensboard can be pulled along the rails onto the camera door, the "folding bed", to unfold the bellows. Usually the slide is ajustable for different bellows lengths, often with help of a focusing scale so that ground glass focusing is not necessary for snapshots. Therefore the cameras usually have a small waist level viewfinder mounted on the folding bed or on the lens board. When folded and closed the whole camera is securely enclosed in its own body, including the finder.

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