Nicht immer nur Kaviar ... (English Version)

[pippy]

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55 minutes ago, Pyrogallol said:

Yashica 35. Rangefinder camera looking a bit like a Contax. Fixed 45mm f1.9 lens with leaf shutter...

By a very strange coincidence I'm looking at another example currently advertised for sale with a serial No. fewer than 100 away from yours at this very moment!

Spooky!

Philip.

[sandro]

An ingenious but very difficult design, this Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super BC. Wonderful idea with the interchangeable filmholder, but the whole system became rather complicated. Also with the lenses!

Lex

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[wlaidlaw]

15 minutes ago, sandro said:

An ingenious but very difficult design, this Zeiss Ikon Contaflex Super BC. Wonderful idea with the interchangeable filmholder, but the whole system became rather complicated. Also with the lenses!

Lex

Zeiss did not learn their lesson. A couple of decades later, they went down the same route with Franke & Heidecke. They jointly bought the old Voigtlander factory at Braunschweig and set about producing the vastly over complex Rolleiflex 2000SL/3003 system, with no less than 35 different lenses, just for the 35mm system cameras and a whole infrastructure plus the 66/600X medium format system and lenses. Zeiss survived this but F&H didn't. I have a 3003 Rolleiflex and it really is a bells and whistles camera, with marvellous lenses and interchangeable film backs, battery packs etc but ergonomically completely hopeless and the most awkward to use camera I have ever come across. It also cost about 40% more than the contemporary R8 or Contax RX. 

Wilson

[sandro]

2 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

Zeiss did not learn their lesson. A couple of decades later, they went down the same route with Franke & Heidecke. They jointly bought the old Voigtlander factory at Braunschweig and set about producing the vastly over complex Rolleiflex 2000SL/3003 system, with no less than 35 different lenses, just for the 35mm system cameras and a whole infrastructure plus the 66/600X medium format system and lenses. Zeiss survived this but F&H didn't. I have a 3003 Rolleiflex and it really is a bells and whistles camera, with marvellous lenses and interchangeable film backs, battery packs etc but ergonomically completely hopeless and the most awkward to use camera I have ever come across. It also cost about 40% more than the contemporary R8 or Contax RX. 

Wilson

You are so right, Wilson. And I have always wondered if they never had product designers in their company...

Lex

[wlaidlaw]

21 minutes ago, sandro said:

You are so right, Wilson. And I have always wondered if they never had product designers in their company...

Lex

A surfeit of hubris and a total lack of commercial common sense. Same thing as with Hasselblad/Fuji and the XPAN. Having had a complete commercial failure, both enterprises then compounded their losses by Rolleiflex replacing the 2000SL with the even more complicated 3003 and Hasselblad with the XPAN-II. Wonderful for us film photographers but a disaster for their shareholders. 

Wilson

[willeica]

1 hour ago, wlaidlaw said:

Having had both, I actually preferred the Minox GT to the Rollei 35S. The 35 GT was a perfect shirt pocket camera, that you always had with you. 

Wilson

Nearly bought the Minox several times, Wilson, but never got around to it.

William 

[luigi bertolotti]

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3 hours ago, romanus53 said:

but the lenses are superb - and can be adapted

I do know well by sure (have no less than 3 M adapters for them...😎)

[luigi bertolotti]

40 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

A surfeit of hubris and a total lack of commercial common sense. ..

Wilson

... of which Contarex is the perfect example : they proudly declared it was made with no less than 6000 "finely machined parts" ! And apart maybe the company logo , probably none of them was shared with Icarex or Contaflex (**)... and the (superb) lenses completely redesigned for it... (*)  in times when Nikon made the F and the "poor-but-not-so-much - sister" Nikkormat with lot of common parts, not to speak of optics . 

(*) conceiving a mount and diaphragm actuation which made virtually impossible to make "universal" lenses for it.

(**) maybe the accessory filmholder is the same, indeed.

Edited May 26, 2021 by luigi bertolotti

[luigi bertolotti]

30 minutes ago, willeica said:

Nearly bought the Minox several times, Wilson, but never got around to it.

William 

Me too... 😉 ... the pocketability of Minox was unbeatable and the whole camera fine... I think i never took one just for the reason that my Rollei 35 had felt deceived...  have always thought that cameras do have sentiments of their own... 😄

[wlaidlaw]

For his 60th birthday in 1962, the family bought my father a bulls-eye Contarex with the 55mm f1,4 Planar lens. He did not use it a whole lot, I think finding it too heavy compared with his Leica IIIa. When they moved to a bungalow in 1971, after my father had a stroke and could not manage all the stairs on their previous rambling old 18th century house, I think it got sent to a jumble sale 

Wilson

Edited May 27, 2021 by wlaidlaw

[romanus53]

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nice optic but awful handling: you hold the lens and focus the lens and the camera moves.

[luigi bertolotti]

This one is a bit easier to manage...

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[PG Black nickel]

HI,
I'm coming back to post #132...I finished making the back with the frosted glass and the result is not perfect, especially since I had no plan and I built it from the pictures of the equivalent model. The most complicated are the hinges and the functioning of the septum that I do not understand for the back part, the bellows must fold in the front part but I did not find any copy of this model.

Philippe

 

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[thomas_schertel]

Today I present the Olympus Pen FT, a half frame SLR. With the adaptor for Exaktea mount it is very practicable. You can stop down with the left hand an shoot with the right. The Flektogon allows close focus until the ratio of 1:2. The diaphragm ist corrected automatically.

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yours sincerely
Thomas

 

[pgk]

28 minutes ago, thomas_schertel said:

Today I present the Olympus Pen FT, a half frame SLR.

When I worked in a central London camera shop during student day around 1980, the Olympus Pen was effective obsolete (despite still being apparently available). I always wondered why. It might be regarded as the APS camera of its time, but perhaps was too far ahead of its time, and (film) technology needed to catch up. It may be that its enduring legacy was that Olympus were always conscious of camera size, and their OM series certainly had a great influence on camera size which is still in evidence today. Lovely little cameras as were the OMs.

[pippy]

41 minutes ago, pgk said:

When I worked in a central London camera shop during student day around 1980, the Olympus Pen was effective obsolete (despite still being apparently available).......Lovely little cameras as were the OMs.

I didn't know the FT was still available as late as that! When I was a student (1984-'87) the FT was already something of a cult object. As you say; Lovely things.

Keeping to the Japanese Flavour here is something I picked up largely because an uncle of mine owned one and the photographs it could produce were superb. I happened to find one which came with the 'Electro 35 Kit' which comprises an 'Auto-Up' close-up filter with built-on finder and a pair of auxiliary Wide- and Tele-adapter lenses. The Auto-Up reduces the focussing-range of the 45mm f1.7 Yashinon lens to 45cm-80cm. The Wide adapter has a 0.8x factor which translates as a 36mm lens whilst the Tele (1.4x) allows the lens to become a 63mm equivalent. The shoe-mounted finder has framelines for both 'new' focal-lengths.

All items came in their specially designed cases

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Philip.

Edited June 10, 2021 by pippy

[romanus53]

PAM Britar 4.5/105 for Leica and Exakta

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While the Leica shows the Stewartry-Finder the the Exakta Varex has an additional Novoflex-finder for 50 and 105 mm mounted below.

[thomas_schertel]

It is time to stop spending money ...

Plaubel Peco Junior 6x9:

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yours sincerely
Thomas

[Ambro51]

That’s a stunning kit!  Just what exactly do you see on the GG with those contortions?  

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[thomas_schertel]

I am trying it out. The Eurynar covers 9x12 cm, so that there is no vignetting. The Angulon is more critical.

yours sincerely
Thomas