During the interwar period strut cameras, mainly the Carl Zeiss Palmos, Goerz Anschütz and VN cameras made by Peeling and Van Neck were used extensively throughout Fleet Street almost to the exclusion of any other make. In 1940 the Folmer Graflex division of the Eastman Kodak Company introduced their Anniversary Speed Graphic which was widely adopted throughout the America by press and commercial photographers. It became standard issue for the American, and more significantly for the British camera industry, the British forces throughout the second world war. Many photographers continued to use them after the war and by the 1950s the Graphic was firmly established. The MPP launched in 1949 and prototype VN baseboard cameras, essentially copies of the Graphic cameras were home-grown attempts to meet this challenge.

The most innovative designs of the early postwar period were produced by G. H. Williamson of Oxford. In the mid-1950s a series of Williamson designs were marketed by Dawe Instruments who were, at the time, in the forefront of British electronic flash equipment.

The Nelrod launched circa 1950 was described by the British Journal of Photography, (5 August 1955, p. 383) as 'a revolutionary instrument which combined many novel features with hand-made construction of quite exceptional excellence'. The BJPA of 1950 which reviewed the Nelrod Liteflash Press camera stated that it has 'been designed by a press photographer for a press photographer, and it certainly incorporates a a suprising number of special features that must gladden the heart of any number of that brotherhood'.

The camera was all electrical powered by a separate power pack for the flash unit which would allow up to five flash lamps to be fired at once. The Ross f/4.5 lens was standard and other lenses up to 24 inch were available to order. The camera sold for £155 0s 0d without flash equipment and £185 0s 0d with flash equipment.