Gentle reader,
While I stopped actively collecting cameras some time ago, and they were truly were the first thing I chose to collect, I have added a few to my small stable of keepers.
Like the upsurge in LP music sales and turntable sales as well, there are some that are turning back to film, and others that never stopped using it.
We had attended a local annual church bazaar and I found an old Yashica camera there. It intrigued me and I showed it to my father-in-law. It was a rangefinder-focusing camera, of which I knew nothing. He showed me how it worked and that is what started it all.
I of course had heard of Leica cameras, and my pre-Internet research showed me that Leica made one of the first high quality 35mm (called miniature at the time) still cameras using movie film, and that they started making rangefinders, I knew owning one was my goal.
When word spread that I was into cameras, people started giving them to me. The first was my wife's friends that sort of took her and her girls under their wings and became known as "Granny and Pop-Pop". We were visiting them, again, this is twenty years ago, I mentioned my new hobby and Jim, (Pop-Pop) walked down the hallway and came back minutes later handing me a leather object. I had no idea what it was, he said, "Open it." Once I folded back the leather, I still had no idea what it was. So he showed me:
The cold "shoe" (where a flash slides on the camera) on this early model Vitessa was an option and merely grips the camera. It is removable and underneath is the "Voigtlander Vitessa" engraved in the top.
To open the doors and release the lens with it's tiny bellows, one presses the shutter button (right side above, left side in the image below) the doors pop open and the lens slides out. The plunger, (left side above, right side below) is what winds the film, and cocks the shutter when depressed.
Focusing is done with the knurled knob seen above below the distance dial in the image above.
One looks through the viewfinder and sees, in this case, the diamond shaped smaller image in the center and the rest of the view. One turns the knurled dial until the diamond's image coincides with the central portion of the rest of the view, the subject is now in focus. Google "Rangefinder camera) for more info and images.
The small window on the front is the film counter which resets to zero when the back/bottom is removed after rewinding the film for removal.
The Voigtlander Vitessa is a most unusual camera, but very high quality. Jim carried it all over Korea in the Korean war and it still works perfectly today.
To close it, one gently presses the lens inward, pressing the barn doors over it and depressing the plunger until it clicks.
My now-late (as of 2001) father-in-law spent most of the year in Puerto Rico. One day, a package arrived for me from him. I called my wife at work, she knew nothing of it, so told me to open it.
In it, among the newspaper, the first thing I found, I thought to be some strange pot lid, but no handle and a notch cut out of it. So I kept digging. Next was a large and heavy metal box with black leather covering it and some attachments. Remember, I'm on the phone with her still, I found what appeared to be a latch and pressed it. A hinged door came down and I saw a lens with "Linhoff" engraved on it. WTH?
What it turned out to be was the Busch Pressman camera. It was made in the USA. The largest one above in the two pictures. It uses 4" by 5" sheet film and was mostly used by news photographers long ago. Graflex is most known for this type of camera. They are German. You can see the pot lid is the flash reflector and the flash handle which uses "D" cell batteries and the light bulb sized flash bulbs. Such a handle was the basis for light-sabers in Star Wars.
The shutter had issues and I had it repaired. I actually made one image with it:
Pretty cool, huh? The other three I attempted did not come out.
Back to the photos that show the Busch above. My sister, Rebecca, found, bought and gave to me the box camera and folding camera also shown above. Prior to that, my brother, Jim, also gave me a camera:
As you can see, this is a Rollei 35. Made in Germany and later in Singapore, it is the smallest full-frame, 35mm camera made. A very precisely made little jewel of a camera.
The lens collapses into the body for easy pocketing, but one has to cock the shutter first. I leave it open because I don't want to keep the shutter under tension. Later, I found the correct flash for it which, as you can see, attaches to the hot shoe on the bottom. Again, a most unusual design, but it too still works perfectly.
That's it for the gift cameras, but as they ARE gifts from loved ones that made the effort and expense to give them to me, I shall never part with them.
Now for the cameras that I have recently bought. I had ones like or similar to them all in the past, but wanted to have the in the collection again.
First is an Aires 35 IIIC. Aires was a Japanese camera maker and I had a number of them once. The IIIC was made to look an awful lot like a Leica M3. At a glance, it looks exactly like one.
No, I do not, never owned one, too expensive. Google it if you really want to compare the two.
Next, a Kiev. This is the later 4am model. These were Soviet-made copies of Zeiss pre-WWII Contax cameras. I will show you a Contax I had to compare below.
This is a post-war lens, one can tell because it is coated. (The colors that show up in photos are reflections of the various lens coatings.)
These photos are from long ago before I learned how to work Photoshop as well as I do now, thus the odd coloring.
Quite worn, isn't it, but it too, still worked when I sold it.
Final newest addition to the camera collection, is a Zorki. This is a Id from 1953, three years older than I am. It came with a collapsible 50mm f3.5 lens, but I had this 50mm f2.0 Jupiter lens and replaced it. Remember, Jupiters are exact copies of the Zeiss lenses.
Way back, when Lieca was just coming out with their Leica II with built-in rangefinder focusing, in the Soviet Union, they were copying them for their home market. What was Leitz going to do, sue Russia? The first mass produced ones were called FED cameras, Google it to find out why. Then they expanded and started selling others called Zorki.
Below, are some photos for comparison with my 1946 Lieca IIIC. I recoverd it in red sea-snake skin.
The Leica has an f1.5 50mm lens which lets in more light. Below is comparisons of the 50mm M39 (Leica screw or thread) lenses:
Left to right: f1.5, F2.0, F2.0 black body, f3.5 collapsible body. See how each L->R lets in less light at fully open aperture? When someone says they have a "fast lens" they mean it has a large maximum aperture.
Below are the black f2.0 and f3.5 mounted on my 21st Century Viogtlander Bessa R:
This black lens was standard on the Zorki-4K made in the late 1970's.
This collapsible lens is an Industar-22. This is one of the later models and is coated. Above it is open and ready to use. Below the images show it collapsed for storage in a case or pocket.
Thanks for looking,
Scott
