Zeiss Historica Fall 2001 A large amount of this issue is devoted to the Contax, from early Contax I rangefinders, the Contax S SLR, a prototype 3cm Contax viewfinder, and the Kiev, which was the Soviet version of the Contax. Pg 2. The early SLR Contax of 1949. From late 1945,…
Zeiss Historica Fall 2000 The Fall 2000 issue has everything from 1980s SLRs to notes found in the estate of the ZHS’s founder about a meeting in 1937 celebrating Zeiss-Ikon’s 75th anniversary. Pg 2. A voice from 1937. The following text was found in the materials forwarded to ZHS from the…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2002 The Spring 2002 issue examines the metal focal plane shutter used in many early Zeiss 35mm cameras like the Contax. We also see some early prototypes of the Contax S, and in Zeiss Historica’s 2001 Annual meeting, there were some pretty good special guests! Pg 2. The…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2001 Prototype lenses for three different Zeiss cameras, a look back at Carl Paul Goerz and his contributions to early Zeiss-Ikon and more of the story of how Zeiss-Ikon moved from Dresden to Kiev, Ukraine. Pg 2. Prototype Lenses for the Contax, Contaflex, and Contarex. It should come…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2000 The Spring 2000 issue brings us several unusual Zeiss cameras, pre-Zeiss cameras, and an in depth look as to why wide angle lenses were so difficult for the Contax. Pg 2. Pre-Zeiss Ikon Camera Design. Zeiss Ikon was founded in 1926 after merging 4 Dresden area optical…
Zeiss Historica Spring 2013 The Spring 2013 issue has Ottos, Ghisettis, Cavinas, and Benjamins along with detailed write-ups about the Werra, Aseros, and the Zeiss Planar. That’s a lot of Zeiss! Pg 2. While the Tessar might be Zeiss’s most popular lens design, the Planar is not only older, but…
Earlier this week, I posted my take on the Zeiss-Ikon Contarex “Bullseye”. Feedback to that article has been very good with most people who’ve handled it before, agreed with my assessment that while it was a pretty camera with an amazing Rube-Goldberg-like complexity, it wasn’t a very good user. Sometimes,…
This is the Contarex, a professional grade 35mm SLR camera produced by Zeiss-Ikon starting in 1960. This first generation Contarex earned the nickname “Bullseye” for the large prominent circular exposure meter above the lens. The Contarex was one of the first West German SLRs with a focal plane shutter, and…
For the first 50 editions of my Keppler’s Vault series, I’ve brought to you articles from the late 1940s through the late 1960s from a variety of publications on topics that I thought were interesting enough to share. So with this, the 51st edition of Keppler’s Vault, you might think…
Today marks the 65th Anniversary of the release of Kodak Tri-X black and white film, in 35mm, 120, and 620 roll film formats. Tri-X was a film that at the time of it’s release was one of the fastest black and white emulsions ever made, and allowed photographers to take…
Another Halloween, another Cameras of the Dead article. This year, as I browsed through my ever growing collection of broken cameras, I started to see a pattern. While sure, I have my fair share of broken Japanese, American, and Soviet cameras, but I’m starting to see more and more European…
This is a Ricoh Diacord L, a twin lens reflex medium format camera, made by Riken Optical Industries LTD starting in 1957. The Diacord was the name of the export model and the L suffix indicated that it had an uncoupled selenium light meter for exposure measurement. The Diacord L…
