Zeiss Historica Spring 2010 One way in which cameras are superior to humans is that with the right care, they can last for a very, very long time. People on the other hand, have a finite shelf life, and in the Spring 2010, the Zeiss community lost three of it’s…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2009 The Spring 2009 issue looks at a very rare Zeiss lens, a failed “Instamatic” SLR, and explores 100 years of Zeiss Optical design. Pg 2. One of the rarest Zeiss lenses was the Herar a 3.5cm f/3.5. It was available in Contax and M39 mount. Pg 5. The…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2008 Zeiss-Ikon made two completely different cameras named the Contaflex, and in this Fall 2008 issue, we get 8 pages of the 35mm TLR Contaflex. Pg 2. A visit to Jena and Dresden, the birthplaces of some of the best cameras and lenses ever made. Pg 5. Zeiss turret…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2007 Most camera collectors know August Nagel as the man who worked for Kodak and made the Retina, but before signing on with Kodak, Nagel worked for Zeiss-Ikon. Other stories include a modern Zeiss Ikon camera from the 21st century with a Leica M lens mount. Pg…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2009 In the Fall of 2009 Zeiss Historica told the stories of two men who helped make the company what it was, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott. There’s also two book reviews, a telling of Zeiss’s 75th Anniversary, and a great article about the Ikonta and Super…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2006 Pg 2. Carl Zeiss Jena Contax lenses in Leica Thread Mount. Although Zeiss was heavily invested in making lenses for their own Contax cameras, they also made them for the competition, why? Pg 7. The Zeiss Jena 10×70 H, an unknown member of the H-Binocular family Pg…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2005 Holy moly! What is that on the cover of this issue? The 40 cm f/1.5 UHU lens makes the Contax II and it’s viewfinder look like toys when placed side by side. What is it like to shoot a 400mm telephoto lens at f/1.5? In addition…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2007 Sometimes people ask me where I get my information from for my in depth camera reviews. A combination of other internet sites, forums, old magazines, catalogs, newspapers, and sometimes issues like Zeiss Historica are all places I’ve gotten my facts from. The Spring 2007 issue was…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2008 The 10 page story on Siegfried Bohm dominates the Spring 2008 issue, and for good reason. There’s a lot of information to share. Other stories include information about Zeiss Ikon’s early camera production, including their first all new model, the Ikonette from 1928. Pg 2. After it’s…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2006 Although the Spring 2006 issue has only 4 articles, there’s some great stuff here. First, we have Peter Dechert’s look at the Tenax, an 11 page article on Zeiss observatory telescopes, some Russian history, and an in depth look at one of Zeiss’s triplets, the Triotar.…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2005 I previously wrote an in depth article on the Wehrmacht Leica, with Jim Lager of the Leica Historical Society, but Leitz wasn’t the only supplier of photographic goods to the German Wehrmacht. Zeiss also did it, and in this issue, there is a fascinating look at…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2004 I love prototypes! I’ve written about Kodak prototypes of the 1930s and others by Voigtländer, but one I’ve never heard of was the Prototype 132, a cleanly designed, but revolutionary camera that was designed in the late 1950s. Had the camera been produced, it would have…
