This is a Zeiss-Ikon Contax III, a 35mm rangefinder camera built by Zeiss-Ikon in Dresden, Germany between the years 1936 and 1942. The Contax III was an upgrade to the Contax II from the same era, adding a selenium exposure meter to the top plate. The Contax II and III…
This week’s Keppler’s Vault is about System Cameras, but before we begin, perhaps it would be wise to answer the question, what is a system camera? Is it the same thing as a camera system? Apparently this question was on everyone’s minds 46 years ago when this article from the…
This is a Leicaflex, a 35mm SLR produced by Ernst Leitz Wetzlar between 1964 and 1968. It was the first in a series of Leicaflex SLRs that were produced through 1976 using the company’s all new Leica R bayonet lens mount that would continue with the Leica R series through…
This is an Ebner 4.5×6 folding camera produced by Albert Ebner & Co. in Stuttgart, Germany between the years 1933 and 1935. There were two Ebner cameras made, this one and a 6×9 version, neither of which were identified by any name other than the size of the images they…
This is a Tower 45, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Nicca Camera Co. Ltd. of Japan for sale by the American department store chain, Sears, Roebuck, & Co. The Tower 45 first appeared in the 1957 Sears Camera Catalog and featured a redesigned top plate with a film advance…
For this site’s first post on the human anatomy, I bring you an interesting article from the March 1961 issue of Modern Photography called “The Eye: From Lens to Darkroom” in which author George Wald investigates how our own eye compares to that of an optical lens. I’ve suffered from…
This is an Exakta Real, a 35mm SLR camera made by Ihagee Kamerawerk AG in West Berlin, Germany starting in 1966. The Exakta Real was an attempt at introducing an all new Exakta model with updated features that would have made it competitive with other cameras being sold at the…
In each of the past four year end wrap ups of those year’s top cameras, Modern Photography selected 47 cameras each time. For the first time since I’ve been looking back to these articles, the number gets rounded up a “less odd” 48. Why 48 and not 47 again or…
This is a Petri 1.9 Color Corrected Super, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Kuribayashi Shashin Kōgyō K.K. starting in 1960. This camera is part of Kuribayashi’s long running series of 35mm rangefinders starting with the Petri 35, which were produced between 1954 and 1961. There are a huge number…
In this Keppler’s Vault series, I’ve shared articles about many of Kodak’s classic black and white films such as Tri-X, Plus-X, and even Royal-X, but the time has come for what is not just my all time favorite Kodak film, but probably my all time favorite film of any kind…
This is an ANSCO Memo, a compact 35mm box camera that shoots 18mm x 24mm exposures on double perforated 35mm cinema film. The Memo first went on sale in 1927 and predates Kodak’s type 135 film format, using it’s own proprietary “Memo Cassettes” which can accept bulk 35mm film, but…
In October 2018, I reviewed the KMZ Zenit-E, one of the most well known and identifiable cameras to ever come out of the former Soviet Union. Millions of Zenits were produced from 1952 – 1996 and many of them were the Zenit-E. When they were first released, the Zenit used…
