Voigtländer comparison

It is interesting when looking at a series of cameras to see what has been improved and at what cost.  Generally, improvements cost money and as the retail price is set by the market. as cost saving must be made elsewhere. This article looks at the three Voigtländer cameras that I have – Vito II, Vito B and Vito Automatic I – which are more or less an equivalent series aimed at an enthusiastic amateur. Each of these came in variations but I am restricting myself to the actual cameras I own.

Of the three Voigtländer cameras that I have, the Vito B is the nicest design, the easiest to use and aesthetically the most pleasing. The Vito II lacks in both use and aesthetics as a result of the design of the shutter. Voigtländer bought their shutters from Gauthier (a part of Zeiss Ikon) and the Vito II uses a Pronto and the Vito B a Prontor-SVS. The Pronto is little, if at all, changed from pre-war designs and is mostly painted black apart from the front bezel, while the Prontor-SVS has a much more modern look – it is all stainless steel and chrome. The Vito Automatic I has a Prontor-matic 125 shutter which doesn't manage to look quite as elegant as the Vito B's shutter although it is not that different

The Vito II is also larger (125mm wide)than the Vito B (115mm wide) – a necessity due to the folding bellows behind the lens: they take up a fair bit of room when closed. Apart from the width differ3ence, they are much the same size in use. The Vito Automatic I is also 125mm wide plus the catch for the back making an overall 130mm. This is due to the large toothed sprocket beside the take-up spool which is absent on both the Vito II and Vito B. The Vito Automatic I is also much taller at 90mm compared to 70mm (Vito B) and 75mm (Vito II).

The overall finish is the same in the three cameras – stainless steel and black leatherette.

Shutters – The design changed drastically between the Vito II and the Vito B. Apart from appearances, the main differences are the number of speeds available and the fastest speed.  The Vito II has four speeds available (1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/200) and the Vito B has eight (1 second, ½, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100 and 1/300). The Vito Automatic I while being the more modern camera has only three speeds available (1/30, 1/60 and 1/125). All three have B available as well.

The next change is in how the shutter is cocked. The Vito II has the old fashioned manual cocking lever that needs to be set by hand. The Vito B has the shutter cocked when the film is advanced. Both of those only need a gentle touch on the shutter release button to fire the shutter. The Vito Automatic I has the shutter cocked by the shutter release in the first part of its travel which means that a much “firmer” touch is required.

The biggest fault with the Vito B is that the shutter blades are behind the lens and so it is possible to touch them – and damage them – when cleaning inside the camera. In both the Vito II and the Vito Automatic I the shutter is in between the lens elements and in front of the iris diaphragm.

The diaphragms themselves are very different. The Crudest is the Vito Automatic I which has only four blades giving an almost square aperture (almost square as the iris blades are curved). In my example, the diaphragm does not open evenly and at f4 the aperture is decidedly kite shaped.

The Vito II AND Vito B both have 10 iris blades and produce a nearly circular aperture. The reduction in iris blades in the Vito Automatic I seems to be one of the trade-offs required to pay for the automation.

The Vito Automatic I also has only two shutter blades (or at least only two visible) while the Vito II and Vito B both have the five blades we would expect of a Pronter shutter - another cost saving it would seem.

All three are synchronised for flash and have a PC socket available. The Vito II and Vito Automatic I have no setting for synchronising the flash and I assume they are permanently set for bulb flash, The Vito B has M, X and V settings – bulb, electronic and delay.

Voigtlander Repair Notes
Voigtländer and I in Pursuit of Shadow Catching: A Story of Fifty-Two Years' Companionship with a Camera

Voigtländer rangefinder

Voigtländer produced a small rangefinder as an accessory for their range of cameras in the 1950s.  There were at least two versions of this as evidenced by the shoe connector.  The rangefinder sits in the accessory shoe on top of the camera and is entirely independent of the camera.

The rangefinder is die-cast in an aluminium alloy.  Externally, there is one eyepiece and two objective lenses with a central knob/dial.  Internally, the eyepiece looks through a half-silvered mirror out through the left-hand objective lens.  The light coming in the second, right-hand objective lens is reflected by a sloping mirror onto the left-hand half-silvered mirror and hence out through the eyepiece.  The sloping mirror behind the right-hand objective lens is controlled via a cam by the external knob/dial.  Turning the knob/dial alters the angle of the mirror and so alters the path of the light towards the eyepiece.

In use, one looks through the eyepiece and sees two versions of the scene - one directly and one reflected through the second lens.  Turning the central knob/dial moves the second image from side to side.  When the images are superimposed, the correct distance can be read off the knob/dial.

This is a very simple mechanism and there is little to go wrong with it.  My rangefinder had a quantity of dust inside which was easily removed with a soft brush.  I also gently polished the surface of both mirrors.  Adjusting the rangefinder is also easy.  You merely focus on an object at a known distance away and move the knob/dial on its spindle so that the correct distance is against the mark.

The only real fault is that the second, right-hand objective lens is rather small so the image reflected off the half-silvered mirror is relatively faint - half the light from from this objective passes through the half-silvered mirror and we only see an image that is half as bright as that from the left-hand objective lens.  To help, the half-silvered mirror is tinted orange which makes the faint image easier to see.

Voigtlander Vito B and Vito BL

Voigtlander Vito B & BL

Voigtlander Vito B

Vito B (BL lower down)

This is a very nice camera from the 1950s (1956 for this camera). It is well designed and well made – no plastic (at least not visibly) and the pressings and millings are neatly finished. It is a pleasure to look at and to hold.

lens:  Color-Skopar

focal length:  50 mm

apertures: f3.5 to f16

focus range: 0.8 m (2.6 ft)

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Prontor SVS

speeds: 1 s to 1/300 s

flash: PC socket

film size: 35mm

Voigtlander's Vito B was their first rigid 35mm camera - made in Braunschweig, Germany.  It was brought out in 1954 and was a Vito II replacement for the excellent .  It was discontinued about 1961.  The Vito B spawned a number of other cameras - Vitomatics I and II and the BL series.  These had built-in light meters and, in the case of the Vitomatic II, a coupled rangefinder.  The price new in England was around £24 for the model with the Prontor SVS shutter.  In 1959, a new model was brought out with a larger bright-line viewfinder.  The camera is only 115 mm wide, 70mm front to back and 70 mm high. This fits well into the hand and is small enough to fit into a coat pocket. It also has a lens hood which adds a further 25 mm to its length. This is the successor to the Vito II folding camera and is both slightly smaller and slightly heavier than its predecessor but with the disadvantage for carrying that the lens does not fold away. The main structure of the camera is die cast with pressed chrome plated covers.

The film advance lever falls nicely to the thumb in use but travels well to the front of the camera which is a bit awkward in use. There is also an accessory shoe on top which is designed for a rangefinder as much as for a flash gun. There is a PC  (for Prontor Compur) socket on the underside of the lens for a flash gun – the camera can synchronise for bulb flash (M) and electronic flash (X). The flash synchronising lever is also used to set the shutter delay timer (V for Vorlaufwerk). The shutter is cocked by advancing the film – an improvement over the Vito II which had a manual cocking lever on the shutter housing. It is also an improvement over the later Vito Automatic I where the shutter release also cocked the shutter during the first part of its travel.

The lens is a 50mm Color-Skopar with a maximum aperture of f3.5. This lens is based on Zeiss Ikon's Tessar lens – four elements, two of which are cemented together and air gaps between the others. These lenses are surprisingly good, especially if you stop the lens down to f8.   Focussing is by way of the whole lens assembly so image quality is not reduced as you focus closer.  The lens takes a 32 mm push fit filter or lens hood.

Focussing is either scale focussing which relies on you knowing the distance to the subject or zone focussing with two settings – o which focusses the lens to between 15 feet and infinity and ߜ which focusses the lens to between 8 and 18 feet. Both of these need the aperture to be set to f5.6 or better.   Voigtländer  produced a small rangefinder to fit on the accessory shoe which allowed accurate measurement of the distance but this was not coupled to the focusing and needed the user to read off the distance from the rangefinder and then set that distance on the focussing ring.

Behind the lens is a either a three speed Pronto or an eight speed Prontor-SVS shutter.  There is also a shutter delay timer but on old cameras it is supposed to be a bad idea to use this – although on my 56 year old camera it works fine on fast speeds (1/100, 1/300) but not at all on any of the slower speeds. The shutter works quite well at faster speeds from 1/300 to 1/25) but is very slow indeed on the slower speeds – 1/10 second is actually above five seconds! This probably means that the shutter mechanism needs a service but I have to ask if the cost of this is warranted. I have found on other cameras that the shutter works better after it has been used a few times. When acquiring a new old camera it is worth bearing in mind that the cameras has probably been sitting unused in a drawer for the last thirty years or so.

The film chamber opens in an unusual way – first you open a small door in the base and then the back will swing open.  This is designed to make inserting a film easier and works quite well but for some reason Voigtländer abandoned this on subsequent cameras. Fitting the film is extremely easy. The film sprocket holes fit over a large toothed wheel which serves to cock the shutter when the film is advanced. For this reason, an empty camera will not allow you to fire the shutter. When the film is fitted, you have to turn a toothed wheel on the underside to set the number of frames available. This number appears in a window just above the lens and shows the number of frames still available – the camera counts down from 24/36 to zero. There is also a strange prong just below the lens – this appears to be a foot so the camera will stand on a flat surface when using the shutter delay timer but no mention is made of it in the manual.

The view finder is very small being 8mm in diameter at the rear and 10x16 mm in the front. This means the view is rather smaller than real life  at about two thirds but is adequate and certainly bright enough.

The pictures that this camera produces are good even by modern standards.

Vito BL

The Vito BL is based on the Vito B mark II - that is, the version with the larger viewfinder. There are two changes. One is the addition of a light meter to the camera. The second is these of an EV enabled shutter (I am given to understand that some Vito B cameras also had EV enabled shutters but I have never seen one). The shutter is a Prontor SVS - the same as the Vito B above.

The light meter uses a selenium cell which does not need a battery to work. Selenium light metre's get an undeservedly bad press predicated on their losing sensitivity over time. While this is theoretically correct, I have yet to see a selenium meter that was not still accurate, even with meters that are over 55 years old.

With the design of the meter, film speed (ISO) is set by turning a knurled knob on the back of the top plate. This moves a series of numbers into view. Each series is identified by a letter - each letter represents a different ASA/ISO rating. B is 12 DIN/12 ASA, C is 15 DIN/25 ASA, D is 18 DIN/50 ASA, E is 21 DIN/100ASA, F is 24 DIN/200 ASA and G is 27 DIN/400 ASA. For those who are not aware, films speeds double with 3 added to the DIN rating. 24 DIN is twice as fast as 21 DIN. With ASA/ISO, double the film speed has double the ASA rating. 400 ASA is twice as fast as 200 ASA.

Meter set to F - 24 DIN or 200 ASA/ISO

To read the meter, turn the knob on the back until the letters representing your film speed comes into view.  You then point the camera at the subject and look at the needle in the meter display. It will be sitting in either a white or a black zone. At the left edge of the zones are the EV values. The EV value adjacent to the zone the needle is in is then set on the EV range on the shutter - to do this, you have to depress a chrome lug on the left, besides the EV 2.

Knurled meter knob below meter

The EV enabled shutter has the usual shutter speed and aperture rings but they are linked by a third ring - the EV ring (EV stands for Exposure Value). When you set the EV value from the light meter, you link a range of shutter speeds to a range of apertures. You can then turn the shutter speed ring to select a combination of shutter speed and aperture but only those that give the required exposure (it is rather like P mode on a digital camera in that a respect). See three photos below. The range of EVs available are from 2 to 18. EV 2 is 2 seconds at f/3.5 and EV 18 is 1/300 seconds at f/22 A summers day in England is usually going to be about EV 14 to EV 15.

In every other aspect, this Vito BL is the same as a Vito B.

EV set to 11 - 1/60 second and f/5.6

EV set to 11 - 1/200 second and f/3.5

EV set to 11 - 1/4 second and f/22

Photos from the Vito B

Camera

QSS-30

Oddfellows Hall, Lincoln

Camera

QSS-30

Busker in Lincoln

Camera

QSS-30

Roof tops in Lincoln, Abbey ward.

Voigtländer and I in Pursuit of Shadow Catching: A Story of Fifty-Two Years' Companionship with a Camera
Voigtlander Repair Notes
 VOIGTLANDER 35 MM GUIDE
Voigtlander Repair Notes