An old Voightlander

I saw Phil's thread of his old Canon camera, so I thought I'd repost this, I originally posted it months ago on Dogsey.





The old thing still works, it takes 120 roll film, and I still have all my developing gear.
I payed £5 for it 50 years ago, it was one of my first pay-packets when I was an apprentice.

When was the last time you actually took a picture with it? You should scan some of your early works for us

In 19?? It's that long ago I really can't remember, I had to get a range-finder for it to be certain of getting the focus correct, I've still got the range-finder as well. It fits onto the accessory shoe.

Does everyone know what a rangefinder is? What with all these modern fangled cameras we all now seem to have

No idea! enlighten us

It's a small optical range-finder, it works on the principle of two mirrors inside, one eyepiece to look through, and two object lenses, there's a dial you turn and as you do so, it moves the mirrors inside until two images merge into one, when this happens, you look at a scale on the dial, which is marked in feet and yards, then, you've got the range and adjust the lens accordingly, easy aint it.

Nowadays we have auto-focus on even the most basic of cameras...

A few years ago you had power focus on things like the Olympus OM-101...

Before that was manual focus on your SLR....

But before that - when SLR's hadn't been invented... you had to work out how far away your subject was, so that you could set your lens accordingly to get a nice sharp result...

A range finder was a little device that you could hand hold - or in some cases slide into the hot shoe mechanism of your flash. Inside was a series of mirrors, that when you looked through you would see two images slightly mis-aligned. As you twiddled the knob, the images would eventually merge into one. At this point you'd examine your range finder to get the setting for your lens, ensuring you had a nice sharp picture.

I used to have one a few years ago... This is what they look like...

Nice one Chris, the one on the extreme right is the one I still have.

Considering I'm only 21 (cough cough cough) I have a good memory of early photography

I was in a shop in Glasgow yesterday (Giggs) in the saltmarket, and there was a camera similar to mine in a glass case.
So I said to the guy that I had an old Voightlander, he asked what model it was and I told him it was a Bessa, so he pulled out this enormous book, it had every kind of camera that's ever been made, with illustrations and data as to when they were made etc, it seems mine was made between 1935 - 1942, after `42, the Geman industry was devoted to making armaments etc, so I'd like to know how it ended up in the UK in 1957.

I think a british soldier perhaps traded it to a German civilian for food or whatever and brought it back as a souvenir, the guy looked at the going price for it, alas, $90, so I'm keeping it for another 100 years.