Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 35

This is a folding camera from Zeiss Ikon based on the medium format Ikonta series. This camera gave rise to two lines of cameras in the mid-50s - the Contina and the Contessa cameras. I have two of these,  an early Ikonta 35 late 1940s to very early 1950s and a slightly updated version.  First I am going to describe the early/original version and then briefly the changes on the updated version.

Ikonta 35 ready for use

lens: Novar

focal length:  45 mm

apertures: f/3.5 to f/22

focus range: 0.8 m to infinity

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Prontor S

speeds: 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/300

flash: PC connector

film size: 35 mm

It measures 120 mm by 75 mm by 40 mm (closed), 80 mm (open) and weighs 440 g.

Ikonta 35 with its carry case

The lens door opens downwards which leaves plenty of room at the sides for the fingers of both hands. On my Ikonta 520 (120 film camera) - and my Nettar folders - the lens door is released by pressing a button on the top and the lens door snaps open on springs and pulls the lens forward to its operating position. On this camera, you slide a button on the top of the lens door and pull the door down by hand. When the door is fully open you have to give it a firm press to click it into place.

Ikonta 35 - folded

The lens is a Novar made by Rodenstock, which is a triplet.  During WWII, bombing of Dresden destroyed Carl Zeiss's lens factory and after German partition West German Zeiss set up new lens making facilities in Oberkochen. It was a long time before they could make enough lenses and so used lenses by Rodenstock and Schneider. Novar lenses are usual excellent if stopped down to f/8 or so - which is what I generally do for all lenses - so I am expecting this lens to be a good performer. Its maximum aperture is f/3.5 which is not spectacular  but plenty wide enough for most practical purposes. The focal length is 4.5 cm - this dates the lens as usual practice in the first half of the 20th century was to quote focal length in cm and in the second half of the 20th century to quote in mm - so, the last of pre-war stock or very early post-war production. The serial number of the camera is followed by an asterisk which I am told probably means the camera was partially made from pre-WWII components so I expect the lens is a pre-WWII lens - the last of Zeiss Ikon's stock? 45 mm is 'normal' for 35 mm film so this lens will render scenes much as human eyes see them.

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Blog copyright by John Margetts, 2014
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Ikonta 35 - right hand view

The shutter is a Prontor S - pre-war Zeiss Ikon used their own Klio name for Prontor II and Prontor S shutters - they seem to have abandoned this after the war.  The S signifies the shutter is synchronised for flash but there is no means of selecting between X or M synch (this was introduced on later Prontor S shutters  - see below - and was standard on the Prontor SV and Prontor SVS shutters). At this age, the shutter needs to be cocked by hand. This is different on this camera to any other shutter that I have come across. You pull the cocking lever anti-clockwise and the lever pulls a second lever across - the first level returning to its rest position.

Ikonta 35 - left hand view

The Prontor S shutter has a top speed or 1/300 which I generally find to be fast enough. My usual films are either 100 ISO or 200 ISO and this allows me to use f/8 or f/11 in good light year round. The shutter has a self-timer (Vorlaufwerk) which we are always told not to use on old cameras. On this camera, the self-timer is very hesitant and took over a minute to fire the shutter - design time is eight seconds! As is usual with old cameras, the slow shutter speeds are way off and unusable - 1/5 seconds is about 5 seconds. On the other hand, I use these old cameras hand-held and so my longest exposure will be 1/50. the slow speeds and fast speeds use different mechanisms within the shutter - 1/50, 1/100 and 1/300 are in the right general area, judging by ear and I shall be surprised if they are not usable. Half a stop either way is well within the latitude of film.

The shutter release is a strange affair. It is not the lever provided by the shutter makers, nor is it a body release. It is a secondary lever attached to the shutter barrel at the top. It is marginally better than the primary release but not as good as the body releases that Zeiss Ikon were using in the late 1930s. Actually, it is very similar in position and action to the shutter release on the Tenax I of 1939 (both cameras designed by Hubert Nerwin). There is also the ubiquitous cable release socket.

The adjuster for the aperture is non-standard as well. It is a toothed wheel on the left side of the shutter housing which is not obvious without the manual (I do not have the manual) and took me a few moments to work out.

Ikonta 35 - top plate

The top plate is very uncluttered. In the centre is a raised part housing the (very small) viewfinder. It measures 9 mm by  6 mm (the same as on my Voigtlander 35mm folders of the same date) and is the weakest part of the camera. This is a reverse Galilean finder ('reverse' because it is like looking through a telescope from the wrong end giving a reduced size view).

On the left-hand end is a reminder for film type - daylight colour, artificial light colour and monochrome. On the right-hand end is a tripod boss. This is the only time I have seen a tripod boss on the top of a camera and means that the camera would be upside down when fitted to a tripod. It would be just about possible to fire the shutter with the release lever but I suspect that anyone who put this camera on a tripod would have used a cable release. The MK II Ikonta 35 had the tripod boss on the lens door - a very big improvement! At either end of the top plate is a rectangular strap lug.

Ikonta 35 - bottom plate

The bottom plate has the film advance on left-hand end - this  is a knob. On the right-hand end is the rewind knob and in the centre of the base plate is a frame counter. In the centre of the film advance knob is a button to allow the take-up spool to turn backwards for rewinding the film.

Ikonta 35 in use.

I have run a roll of film through this camera now.  It is a nice camera to use (I know 'nice' is not a good word to use here) with no design problems getting in the way.  Using it is very similar to using a folding Voigtlander Vito camera.  The shutter release falls naturally (for a right-handed person) under the index finger of the right hand and the ring finger on the left hand can easily turn the film advance.

My main problem with using this camera was, as with all cameras of this age, the small viewfinder. I have developed a technique now of deciding the framing of the picture without looking through the viewfinder, taking my glasses off and positioning dominant parts of the picture without the view being in focus.  This actually works quite well.

The camera has a fault with the film advance mechanism - possibly two related faults. Sometimes when I try to advance the film, the advance knob will not turn. To get this to turn, I have to put my thumb over the lens (to prevent any light getting in), cock the shutter and release it a second time.  This was necessary four times in a 24 exposure roll of film. This suggests that the double exposure prevention mechanism fails to release the film advance on the first firing of the shutter. The second fault is that sometimes the film will advance two frames instead of stopping at one frame - this happened a couple of times wasting two frames. Apart from these two intermittent faults the camera behaved perfectly. There are no light leaks either from the back or from the bellows, exposure is fine as is focus.

New improved version.

Before sharing the results of the test film, I am going to briefly discuss the changes made between the original design as described above and the next version.

There are a couple of minor changes between the original version and the next version. The most obvious is the addition of an accessory shoe above the viewfinder, on the top plate. This is a 'cold shoe'  - there are no electrical contacts for a flash gun yet.

The other change is the use of a more modern Prontor S shutter. On the original Ikonta 35, the Prontor S shutter was synched for flash but there was no means of selecting the synch delay. There was also a self-timer lever. This updated version of the Ikonta 35 has an improved Prontor S that offers either X, M or F flash synch. For X synch you set the selector lever to X (or red) - the flash will fire as soon as the shutter is open. For M or F synch, it is more complicated. First, you set the flash synch selector to yellow. This will give you synch for F flash bulbs (the flash is fired 5 milliseconds before the shutter is fully open to allow the brightness to build up). For M synch, you set the flash synch selector to yellow and the self-timer to M which will fire the flash 20 milliseconds before the shutter is fully open, again to allow the brightness to build up. To use the self-timer actually as a self-timer, the flash synch selector must be set to X/red

There are also a couple of very minor changes - the shutter assembly no longer has a cable release socket so Zeiss Ikon has added one at the top on the other side to the shutter release lever. The release lever is now about twice the diameter of the original one. The last change is that the focal length of the lens is now quoted as 45 mm rather than 4.5 cm.

There are also changes to the leather case. It is now an every ready type case which has a secondary film advance on the underside that meshes with the film advance on the camera. this means the camera can now be used without removing it from its case. There is also a tripod boss on the underside of the case which means it is no longer necessary to have the camera upside-down to attach it to a tripod.

The photographs ( from the original version):

St John the Baptist, Lincoln

Orthodox church, Lincoln

St Mary's Church, Frampton, Lincolnshire

St Peter & St Paul, Kirton, Lincolnshire

St Peter & St Paul, Kirton

St Peter & St Paul, Kirton

St John the Baptist, Lincoln

St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln

St Benedict, Lincoln

St Benedict, Lincoln

St Mary's, Frampton

Gravestone, St Mary's, Frampton

St Mary's

St Mary's

St Peter & St Paul, Kirton

Balda Jubilette

This camera dates from the very late 1930s - the model was introduced in 1938.  The camera is very similar to my Balda Baldina - the Jubilette was a cheaper option but it is still well made.  The Compur shutter has a serial number that should be able to date the camera but the serial number is anomalous - '0016596.  The '00 signifies the size of the shutter - size 00 - and the next five digits are the serial number.  Usually, the number on Compur shutters will have seven digits starting with a '4' or '5' ('4' for 1938, '5' for 1939 or the war years).  Occasionally, Compur shutters are known with five digit serial numbers.  One thought is that the serial number refers to a batch of shutters specially made for Balda rather than being a part of Compur's standard serial number system.

Balda Jubilette, folded

lens:  Baldar

focal length:  5 cm

apertures: f2.8 to f16

focus range: 0.5 m to infinity

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: Compur

speeds: 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/300

flash: not available

film size: 35 mm

The camera is a folder of a fairly standard design. The lens standard is opened by a button on the top of the camera - the lens snaps forward with some vigour into its operating position. The struts holding the lens and lens board in position are nicely chrome plated and both the lens and the lens board are held rigid.

Balda Jubilette in the open position, seen from the top.

As the shutter is a Compur, the cocking lever moves clockwise (which is upwards when holding this camera for use). This is the opposite direction to Gauthier (Prontor) shutters which cock anti-clockwise. The shutter release button is on the lens board by the hinge.  On later versions of the Jubilette, this was moved to the camera body.  This is on the left of the the camera and needs to be operated with the left hand. I prefer this arrangement as it allows more space for my right hand to hold the camera steady. Several of my folders have the lens board hinged on the right which leaves my right hand being very cramped.

Camera from the front, ready to use.

The lens is a Baltar (it was de rigueur to end a lens name with the letters '-ar' - Nettar, Novar, Elmar, Radionar, Tessar, Skopar, Frontar and so on) which was made for Balda by one of the independent lens makers.  Balda did not make their own lenses and may have used more than one manufacturer to make their 'own label' lenses for them.

The controls on the body follow the Baldina layout. In the middle of the top is a very small reverse Galilean viewfinder - it is slightly to the left of centre. On the left of the top is the rewind key - this dates the camera to an early Jubilette as later versions had a rewind knob rather than key. On the right of the top is a frame counter. This counts up - so it tells you how many pictures you have taken and needs to be set to zero when you load a new film. This counter is covered with a yellow plastic disc (probably celluloid given the age of the camera). Beside the frame counter is a small brass button which releases the lens board.

Balda Jubilette in the open position, seen from the bottom

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On the base of the camera is the film advance knob - it is opposite the frame counter on the camera top i.e. on the right-hand end of the base.  Beside the film advance knob is a small button which must be pressed and released in order to free the advance mechanism inside the camera. This button is not sprung (at least not with my camera) and drops down under gravity.  This is important as it means that the film must be advanced with the camera held the right way up: the button dropping down again locks the advance mechanism when one frame has been advanced, if you hold the camera upside down (which makes turning the knob easier) you can advance right to the end of the film.  Note: examining photographs of Balda Jubilettes on Google has lead me to think my camera is missing a spring and a top to the button. The button that I have is threaded inside - indicating that a screw-on cap is missing and I suspect that a coil spring used to sit between the missing cap and the camera body. On the other end of the base is a 3/8 inch tripod boss. This has a large adaptor in it with my camera reducing the boss to 1/4 inch Whitworth which is the modern tripod standard.

Balda Jubilette - rear view

The back of the camera is a hinged door. this has the maker's name embossed in the leatherette (Balda plus a small logo) and in the centre of the back is an aluminium plate printed with a depth of field table (Tiefenschärfentabelle). The catch for the back is spring loaded and a little bit too small for comfortable use with my large fingers (but a big improvement on my Voigtlander Vito II which opens itself). Fastened to either end of the catch is a small carrying handle which is a bit too small for practical use. The front of the camera has the model name embossed in the leatherette (Jubilette). In the front of the lens board is a hinged peg which acts as a leg to stand the camera on when taking self-portraits.

The body of the camera is made of steel - demonstrated by the fact that it is starting to rust in [places. Inside, the film guides and covers over the mechanics are made from brass sheet painted a semi-matt black. The take-up spool is also painted brass. 

Focussing is smooth but has the disadvantage of having the distance pointer beneath the lens. This means that you have to turn the camera to set the focus - not a major problem on an entirely manual camera. Worse is the aperture scale - the white paint in the stamped figures has almost entirely gone making the scale very hard to read. Even worse is the position of of the adjusting pointer. This is very close to the lens board. Getting your finger in there to adjust the aperture means you have no chance of reading the scale. This fault lies with Deckel (the maker of Compur shutters) as they must have known their shutters would be used on folding cameras.

The body of this camera is identical to that of the earlier and more expensive Baldina. It is the details that are cheaper: the viewfinder has no parallax adjustment (although this was available as an extra), the lens is a Baltar  triplet, the frame counter is more functional (it lacks the Baldina's cover and ornate pointer), the exposed metal is painted black rather than being chrome plated. On the plus side, it has a body shutter release (although I think the Baldina also had one by 1938) which is much easier to use than the extended lever on the shutter housing that my 1935 Baldina has.

Jubilette in use.

In many ways, this is an archetypical 35mm folder. My Voigtlander Vito II is much the same size and has a similar too-small viewfinder. The biggest problem I have with cameras of this date is the viewfinder. I just cannot use them while wearing my glasses. Without my glasses I cannot see the image through the viewfinder although I sometimes think that having to concentrate on general outlines and shapes improves my composition - perhaps looking at the details gets in the way.

I have been using cameras with self-cocking shutters lately and I keep forgetting to cock the shutter - this does nothing for hitting that 'decisive moment'! I also press the door opening button on the right hand end of the top of the camera with my right fore finger instead of the shutter release button on the left. If I was using this camera exclusively, that would soon sort itself out.

I have had two problems with camera; both are probably a result of its age. The first is the shutter release mis-locating itself when the lens door opens.  This might have been down to my slightly depressing the shutter release button when opening the door. It can certainly be cured by closing the lens door and opening it again.

The second problem is the mechanism that ensures that you wind on exactly one frame - this is exactly eight sprocket holes. The shaft with the sprockets has eight sprockets on it, so advancing one frame needs the sprocket shaft to rotate exactly one revolution. When Balda designed this camera they had to work around patents owned by Leica, Zeiss Ikon and Kodak (and probably others) so they could not use an obvious and sensible system. The system that Balda designed involves pressing a button as soon as you start to advance the film and then immediately releasing the button and allowing it to 'pop-out' again while you continue to wind-on the film. On my particular camera it is necessary to give the camera a sharp slap to get the button to 'pop-out' again. I am not sure if the button is supposed to be sprung or if the camera relies on gravity - either way, it does not work without encouragement. This is not a major problem but it does slow things down a bit.  See note in blue above.

What has surprised me is that I have found the depth of field table on the back of the camera to be quite useful. The results of using it can be seen in the close-ups of flowers below (after next Wednesday).

In conclusion, this camera is still very usable. It has no bells or whistles and requires the user to think for himself but for me that is no bad thing.

Sample pictures:

First a few pictures that show how well this 76 year-old camera still works.  Focus is good (it is a scale focus camera so I did not really know this until I saw the pictures), little distortion (the arch in the second picture is bowed itself - it is not the lens), and colour rendition is fine even though the lens design pre-dates the use of colour film.  I am very pleased with these.

Lincoln Stonebow

Coloured primroses - distance for the focus was guessed together with a small aperture.

Bright Lincoln street - no flare

Barge on the Witham in Lincoln

Musical tight-rope walker in Lincoln city centre - a small amount of flare from the white wall.

Now a few pictures that are not so good.  First, this lens will not cope with photographing into the light. The lens is not coated at all (as was usual in 1938) and is showing significant flare.  As with using all old cameras, I need to follow my father's advice when I was ten or so - "always keep the sun behind you."

Sunny day in Lincoln.

This next picture shows what often happens when you use the first film in a very old camera.  Winding the film causes a small amount of static electricity on the film's surface.  This static electricity attracts any dirt lurking inside the camera, showing here as many black specks in the sky.

Lincolnshire field with a dirty sky.

This last picture shows how difficult it can be guessing close distances.  The thing to do here would be to carry a yard-stick and accurately measure the distance but that is not how I work.  I guessed and relied on the depth of field keeping everything in focus. It did not work here!

Berberis flowers.

Voigtlander Vitoret 110

Voigtlander Vitoret 110, front view

I am not entirely sure why I bought this camera. The original thought came when I saw some Lomography 110 cartridges for sale in Snappy Snaps in Lincoln. When I saw this camera for sale on Ebay, I found myself bidding.  I was the only bidder and I got the camera for £1.00 plus postage.

It is not a complicated camera. It is a black box measuring 120 mm by 25 mm by 35 mm. The lens and viewfinder (both front and back) are covered by shutters when the camera is not in use. The camera is opened by moving the film advance slider. The shutter button is on top (it is coloured grey) and the film advance (also grey) is below it. If you hold the camera in a pinch grip with your right hand, your forefinger will land on the shutter button and your thumb on the film advance slider.  I don't think you could use this camera one handed as the camera needs to be steadied when winding on the film.

The lens is a Lanthar f5.6 lens - Lanthar lenses are triplets. There is no indication on the camera as to focal length but a search on Google tells me it is 24 mm - this is slightly wide for 16 mm film (normal would be about 26 mm) which is what we would expect for a point-and-shoot camera.

Vitoret 110, rear view

The viewfinder is a reverse Galilean finder (as was usual on consumer cameras by the 1970s)  and is quite large and bright with bright lines for framing - complete with close-up markings. The iris diaphragm is essentially square - so the bokeh will not be spectacular. The aperture can be altered but only by selecting weather icons. The pictorial instructions give f-numbers for these icons - sunny is f16, dull is between f11 and f8, light cloud is f5.6 all at speed 1/125 and dull cloud is f5.6 and speed 1/60.
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This camera uses the 110 film cartridges which just drop into the camera - no need to connect the film to the take-up spool. Opening the camera to insert the film cartridge is not obvious. You need to press a small grey button and slightly move the end of the camera (it only moves 2 mm or so) and then lift up the back.

Using the camera is very easy, there only being three controls: shutter button, advance slider and weather selector. Opening the lens/viewfinder shutters winds on the film. This means it is important not to wind on the film if you are going to put the camera away as when you next use the camera you will waste one frame. I found I kept forgetting to alter the weather selector, but as the light was only varying between sunny and dull I am expecting the latitude of the film to cope. Actually, this raises another point. the instructions mention using 80 ASA film (or 80 ISO for modern films) but the film I am using is 200 ISO which is more than twice as fast. it remains to be seen as to what exactly this means for my final prints.

Sample pictures:

These are reasonable - particularly if you consider that back in the day, these would have been printed as 5x7 prints at the largest.  Compared to a quality camera and quality film, they are a bit grainy but that is not really a proper comparison.  Biggest fault was my propensity to include a thumb in the right-hand edge of the pictures!

Holkham Hall, Norfolk

Filey, North Yorkshire

Humber bridge

Ropewalk Art Centre, Barton-on-Humber

Horncastle market

Horncastle market + close up of my thumb

Wallace Heaton Blue Book - 1952

A paperback illustrated catalogue of the main items that Wallace Heaton sold in 1952. They issued it every year and they were the largest photographic retailer in Britain for many years. So, these are quite common (I do not really understand why people kept them once they were out of date, but they clearly did) and therefore quite cheap to buy.

Wallace Heaton Blue Book 1952

For the camera collector, these Blue Books have two separate appeals. One is that they show us just what equipment was available in a given year.  This is particularly useful where minor changes were made to a camera model and you can see from the photographs in the catalogue how the outside (at least) looked in a particular year. Each item also has a brief description including available lenses and shutters. Secondly, each item is accompanied by a price - or a range of prices for each variation available in that year.

What you cannot do is use this book to see what manufacturers were producing. This particular Blue Book dates from 1952 and the UK had legal limits on the quantities of imports allowed from various places. As most of these cameras were made in Germany, import quotas could be quite small, or even non-existent.

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As a major photographic retailer, Wallace Heaton did not just sell cameras, they sold everything either a professional or amateur photographer could want. They even had a small range of OEM products - distinguished by the trade name 'Zodal' or variations on that.

The main headings in the catalogue are:

cameras
accessories
lighting
materials
darkroom equipment
enlargers
still projectors
cine projectors
tape recorders
binoculars
microscopes
albums
books
services

There are a total of 144 pages and the books dimensions are 5 3/4 inches  by 4 inches (146mm by 100mm). An interesting little book.

Photographic Almanac

First, an apology. This is supposed to be an Old Camera blog, not a book blog but this book is about photography and dates from the same time as many of my cameras.

This book is a well-bound hard cover book - none of this Perfect Binding that falls apart after a few reads. The book has several sections, each of which is interesting in a different way. The book opens and closes with adverts from the main photographic businesses in Britain in 1957. There are 84 pages of adverts at the front and another 117 pages at the rear. 

This is followed by five fairly long and intense articles on photography and  then a selection of abstracts from the British Journal of Photography (which, incidentally, is still published) who are the publishers of this almanac. After this are a number of photogravure plates of photographs. Next are a number of reviews of equipment and materials a couple of which are also articles in this blog (Bewi and Ikophot exposure meters).

After the reviews comes a brief chemistry primer for those chemicals a photographer is likely to come across. This is followed by a nine page glossary of technical terms in photography.

For the serious hobbyist photographer there follows a long section of formulae for developers, sensitizers, desensitizers, intensifiers, reducers, toners, silver recovery, stain removal, varnishes, mountants, and a few other things. The almanac also covers state of the art advances - there is a fairly long primer of the use of flash, both bulbs and electronic, and three-colour photography.

The rest of the book is more technical.  Forty pages of tables for all manner of things is followed by brief outlines of legal issues - copyright, Factory Acts, Shop Acts, registration of businesses, purchase tax, and a few others. (This book assumes a British audience and is also, of course, massively out of date.)

I am going to go through the Almanac section by section and outline what I find interesting in each part.

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Adverts

These start with several pages of adverts from Kodak, which I suppose is fitting as the largest photographic company in the world in 1957 (I am guessing there but doubt I am far wrong). The ads start with colour film - still a new development in 1957 - and then equipment for colour photography, mostly cameras. Then on to black and white films and general cameras. My beef here is that Kodak do not include any pricing which would make the adverts more interesting although I do accept they were not thinking about a reader in sixty years time. The ads move on to chemicals, papers, cine equipment, darkroom equipment and industrial equipment.

The next few pages of ads (forty of them) are smaller ads aimed at professional photographers.  Then we come to Johnsons of Hendon who are more concerned with amateur enthusiasts. After Johnsons there are a few pages of Ilford ads - much the same array as Kodak but less of them.

This takes as to:

Articles

These assume an educated readership - the first article is titled Physics and Metaphysics in Modern Photography - not something I would image would appeal to a mass readership.  This article even goes so far as to touch on quantum mechanics and expects its audience to understand.

Next is an article on replenishing developer - still relevant to analogue photographers today. This is not quite as technical as the previous article but does assume the reader is au fait with basic chemistry.

This is followed by an article of the aesthetics of wild flowers.  In 20013 this reads fairly strangely as it assumes the photographer will be using black and white film which rather loses most of the appeal of flowers. If we remember that the article is a product of its day, it still reads well enough.

After this comes some cutting-edge stuff - television. It can be difficult to remember that in 1957 most people did not have television and when they did it could only be used during the evening - 24 hour TV had to wait for a couple of decades.

The article of the use of filters is still applicable, even to digital photographers.

The next section is called

Epitome of Progress

This section consists of abstracts from articles in two other places - British journal of Photography and Camera World. I will just give a few topics to give a flavour of this section.

Analysis of P.Q. Developers

Diffusion Transfer in Colour

Electro-optical Colour Separations

Wide Screen Systems

Again, these are not in the slightest bit dumbed down and end with a reference to the full article that has been abstracted.

Pictorial Supplement

There follows 32 pages of photogravure prints from "leading exhibitors". Photogravure is a technique for printing photographs with a printing press. This gives very good definition (the picture is not reduces to half-tone dots) and gives pictures that are very attractive.  The iconic photographic magazine Camera Work published by Alfred Stieglitz between 1903 and 1917 used photogravure as its reproduction technique and Stieglitz used the technique as his standard printing technique even if he was not wanting to produce the picture in quantity.  Done well, photogravure pictures compare well with normal silver bromide prints and modern giclee digital prints. In addition, photogravure uses different ink to the normal printing processes and these photographs are printed on thicker, slightly glossy paper. This gives the surface of the prints a certain tactile quality that I find very attractive.

What did surprise me, given the date of this almanac, is that four of the pictures come from the other side of the Iron Curtain - two from Poland and two from Hungary.  All are well worth your attention.

New Goods

This section consists of reviews of equipment and materials available in 1957. There are 112 pages of these. They are worth reading to someone who is interested in old cameras (which I must assume anyone reading my blog will be). Not only do they contain descriptions of the equipment  but also comments on how they fit the expectations of a photographic reviewer in 1957. A further delight is that they include price information  - base price and purchase tax as separate amounts. Some of the cameras that I describe in this blog were very expensive new. They were certainly out of the reach of a normal working-class man and would have represented a sizeable investment for a middle-class man. That will  help to explain why they are usually still in very good condition after nearly sixty years.

Chemicals

Now we have sixteen pages of information about chemicals. This is basically a glossary, giving two to three lines about the most common photographic chemicals.

After this we have

Formulae

This section both gives formulae for photographic solutions that you can make yourself and information about proprietary chemicals. This goes a bit beyond just formulae but I suppose there is a limit on just how many heading they could divide the book into. 

For the enthusiast who wants to take his analogue photography beyond the basics, this is well worth reading.

The next section is

Plan-copying and Recording

This is basically about blueprints and copying office records - this is before the days of photocopiers! Not much here for the photographer apart from adapting the methods to produce cyanoprints.

Flash Photography

Flash photography was still in its early days in the 1950s and you needed to match your flash to your film and set the camera accordingly.  There is much information here about methods of synchronisation and types of shutters. There is also an explanation on how to calculate the correct exposure, using flash with colour, bounce flash, infra-red flash, violet flash, electronic flash and developing film for flash. There then follows some tables of data on various makes of film used with models of electronic flashguns.

There are tables on Reciprocity Failure and how to adjust exposure for various films when using flash.

Cinematography

Here are five pages on amateur cine filming.

Three-colour photography

The next twenty eight pages are about colour films.  There explanations of how the various colour films available in 1957 worked - there were rather a lot of types of colour film that did not last long.

The second to last section is a collection of

Tables

These cover an amazing range of topics. For instance:

Daily variation in Light in different Latitudes.

Shutter Speeds for Moving Objects.

Colour materials for Still Photography.

Conversion tables Imperial to metric.

Optical Calculations (including how to calculate the focal length of a lens and hyperfocal distances).

Miscellaneous Information

This section has a number of useful (or would have been useful in 1957, it is rather out of date now) snippets of information for the budding professional photographer. Topics are:

Copyright

Factories Act

Shop Act

Registration of Business Names

There is a list of photographic text books and hand books which runs to several pages. This section ends with a directory of camera repairers in Britain.

The Almanac ends where it started - with:

Adverts

These adverts are more aimed at amateurs as opposed to the professional bent of the opening adverts. Many (but not all) of these include prices which makes them more interesting to the collector.

Balda Baldina

This is a very nice folding camera from 1930s Germany.  It is one of the first cameras to use Kodak's 35 film cassette - this was made soon after Leitz made the Leica (1925) and Zeiss Ikon the Contax (1932).  It follows Kodak's lead in producing a folding camera unlike Leitz and Zeiss Ikon who both made rigid 35mm cameras.  The camera is fairly small - it measures 120mm x 82mm x 35mm when closed and 120mm x 82mm x 85mm when open.  It is almost exactly the same size as Voigtlander's later Vito and Vito II cameras but a bit heavier. The covering seems to be leather rather than leatherette.  This is my second Balda camera - the other being a Baldessa from 1965.

lens: Schneider Radionar
focal length: 5 cm
apertures: 3.5, 4.5, 5.6, 8, 11, 16
focus range: 1 metre to infinity
lens fitting: fixed
shutter: compur leaf
speeds: 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/300
flash: no connector
film size: 35mm

Balda Baldina - front view

This camera had been stored somewhere not particularly dry before I bought it and the finish showed the results. The leather was very dry and dull, much of the nickel-plated steel has rusted and the moving parts were all very stiff.  I attacked the leather with Bestbeloved's leather restorer and it is now a bit more subtle and has a nice sheen. Moving parts have had a drop of oil/naphtha mix (I mix 2 parts clock oil with one part naphtha to produce a freely running oil. This flows into hinges and axles easily - and when the naphtha evaporates the part is left with a very small amount of oil) and now move easily. I have yet to deal with the rust but will do so when I have finished the test film. I shall rub down just the rust and then treat it with Loctite Rust Remedy. This leaves a durable black finish which I shall leave as-is. The last thing to note, condition wise, is the presence of 'Zeiss Bumps'. Zeiss Ikon cameras are notorious for these and this is the first time I have seen them on a non-Zeiss Ikon camera. they are caused by the manufacturer using a different material for rivets than he used for the body. A chemical reaction will then be set up in the presence of damp resulting in the build-up of corrosion products between the metal of the body and the leather covering. These 'Zeiss Bumps' occur on the lens door and in the leather by the take-up spool.

Zeiss Ikon and Voigtlander used die-cast aluminium for their camera bodies which made for strength and lightness with the added advantage that they were corrosion resistant.  This camera seems to be made from steel.

The outside is a mixture of leather and nickel plating and where the nickel has worn, the camera is rather rusty. My Zeiss Ikon Nettars from the same decade were leatherette and paint and where the paint has worn you can see the aluminium.

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Blog copyright by John Margetts, 2014
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top view

Balda's use of steel and nickel plating would have made the camera cheaper to make.  I assume that this also meant that the camera was cheaper to buy but it would not have been cheap. With a Compur shutter, it would have been aimed at a serious amateur photographer.

The camera is quite well appointed.  It has a 'proper' viewfinder rather than the metal frames that Zeiss Ikon's Nettars and Ikontas had.  This is small (as was usual even on expensive cameras) and is a reverse Galilean finder (that means it is like a telescope backwards as it makes things small). This viewfinder has a remarkable addition - a parallax adjuster. When you have set the focus on the lens, you put the same distance setting on the viewfinder and the viewfinder moves up or down accordingly. For infinity, the viewfinder is fully up and as you dial in nearer distances, the viewfinder lowers itself. Apart from this camera, I have only ever seen this on expensive rangefinder cameras.

On the top plate along with the viewfinder is the film rewind key and the frame counter. This last is beneath a hinged cover and counts from zero to 36.  This is a count-up counter, the user setting the counter to zero when loading a film into the camera.

Beside the viewfinder is a small button. Pressing this will release the hinged lens cover and the lens will spring forward automatically - it does so with a reassuring 'snap'.  The shutter leaves are between the lens elements so focusing is only front-cell focusing (i.e. only the front piece of glass moves when focusing, not the whole lens. This causes a slight degradation of the image with close-up work. For landscapes it makes not a jot of difference).

base view

The film advance is on the bottom of this camera - possibly to circumvent other manufacturer's patents, certainly not because it makes it easier to use. Advancing the film is not as straightforward as turning the knob (no lever advances at this early date).  Leitz, Kodak and Zeiss Ikon had 35 mm cameras on the market when this camera was designed and each had patented every aspect of camera design they could.  They also pursued patent infringement vigorously. The outcome of this is that manufacturers trying to bring new models to market had to find workarounds to avoid being sued. In this case, the film advance is locked until you press a button on the base of the camera. This must be released as soon as you start turning the film advance knob or you will advance more than one frame. To make this as hard as possible, you first have to push in the safety lever, then press the small button and then turn the advance knob.

Also on the bottom of the camera is a tripod boss.  This is the original 3/8 Whitworth thread rather than the more modern 1/4 Whitworth.  This is to one end of the camera - it seems to have taken camera manufacturers a long time to work out the point of balance of a camera.

Balda Baldina - folded

Inside is pretty much as you would expect even from a modern 35 mm camera - a sign that this layout was well designed from the start and not patented.

The hinged back has effective light baffles and so there is no need for foam light seals - nothing to go gooey and messy with age and nothing to start leaking light. In the centre of the back is the pressure plate to keep the film flat against the film gate. To one end is a nickel-plated spring to keep the film in place on the sprockets. Loading film is easy. There is a spring on the take-up spool under which the end of the film goes. No particular shape of film leader is required but the modern standard leader works fine.

When open, the door hinges on the left, leaving plenty of room for the right hand to have a firm hold. Many folding cameras hinge on the right leaving a restricted space for gripping.  Voigtlander's Perkeo and Vito cameras hinge on the right.

When holding the camera for use, the shutter cocking lever  must be moved upwards (this is a Compur shutter, a Gauthier shutter (Prontor) would need the lever moving downwards). The shutter release provided by Compur is hidden by the folding struts and cannot be reached. To overcome this, Balda have added an angled extension which can be reached by the middle finger of the right hand. There is also a socket for a standard cable release.

position of extension lever

Adjusting the shutter speed is easy - this is a rim-set shutter and you turn the outer ring until the required speed is aligned with the index mark. Altering the aperture is not so easy. The control is close to the door and between the folding struts. This is quite do-able but requires looking at the camera from the front.

I have finished the test film which raised a couple of things.  Firstly, firing the shutter. The extension lever that Balda have added to the Compur shutter release travels a long way before it fires the shutter. I found this rather awkward and difficult to hold the camera steady while doing so. Secondly, rewinding the film.  I have no instruction book for this camera and I have to work things out for myself. I assumed that the button that released the film advance mechanism would also release the rewind mechanism. Wrong! My attempt to rewind the film resulted in me pulling all the film out of the cassette. This meant a trip to Snappy Snaps to ask them to remove the film in their darkroom which they did. I now know that to rewind the film you have to lift the film advance knob and leave that other button alone. Oh well - this is all a part of the fun of collecting old cameras. Tomorrow, I shall collect the developed film and post a selection here.

OK. The test film is back - and none the worse for me trying to rewind it the wrong way - kudos to the staff at Snappy Snaps.  I am impressed with this camera. It was made in 1935 (plus or minus a month or two) and has worked flawlessly. The lens shows no sign of having been coated, which would have been very unusual in 1935, but is not particularly susceptible to flare. There is some flare visible in some of the pictures, but I have a habit of shooting into the light which would have been virtually unheard of in 1935 for the very reason that is causes flare.  The lens focuses well and produces high contrast colour pictures. The lens will have been colour-corrected to some extent as that is necessary for using panchromatic black-and-white film and the lens clearly has no problems with modern colour films.

There are marks on some of the negatives - basically, there are scratches which show up on the prints as black marks. I am putting this down to the damage caused when I attempted to rewind the film. It only affects a few of the negatives, most of them being fine.

The pictures:

Shooting to the south on a sunny day (that is, into the sun), hence the flare.

Shooting to the south again, but on a dull day - a small amount of flare.

Shooting to the north on a misty day. No flare but some mist visible in the upper parts of the picture.

Shooting to the south on a sunny morning - no flare as such.

Shooting to the east on a sunny day.

Shooting in a heavily shaded alley - good contrast and colours.

Perkeo I

This is a nice, medium format camera from Voigtlander. It is a direct competitor to Zeiss Ikon's Nettar 518/16 - that is, at the lower end of the enthusiasts' 120 cameras - and is a replacement for the Bessa 66. This is a folding camera which fits nicely in a (large-ish) pocket. It measures 125 mm wide x 85 mm high x 40 mm deep (closed) or x 95 mm deep (open). It weighs 483 g. In 1952, Wallace Heaton were advertising this camera at £22/11/6 for the model I have here (that is in old money and equates to £22.57 in new money. That is equivalent to about £1,400 in 2013 values).

Voigtlander Perkeo I

lens: Vaskar

focal length:  75 mm

apertures: f/4.5 to f/16

focus range: 3.5 feet to infinity

lens fitting: fixed

shutter: pronto

speeds: 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200

flash: F synch only

film size: 120

The lens is a Voigtlander Vaskar - 75 mm focal length and maximum aperture of f/4.5. The Vaskar is Voigtlander's cheaper lens (a more expensive Perkeo I came with a Color-Skopar lens) and has a triplet construction (again, comparable to Zeiss Ikon's Nettar on the 518/16). I have yet to see the result of using this camera, but it has a reputation for having soft focus in the corners. This is not a fatal flaw for me as I have no need for sharp focus in the corners although I am aware that others find this unacceptable.

The shutter is a Gauthier Pronto - four speeds being available of which only 1/100 and 1/200 are of any interest. This shutter has a delayed timer (Vorlaufwerk) which, unusually for a camera of this age, works well. Flash synch is provided for fast flashbulbs - I intend to try this camera with electronic flash to see if this works as well.

The shutter release is standard for the early 1950s - primary release on the shutter housing and a secondary release button on the camera's top plate, linked to the primary release by a lever.  There is also a cable release socket which is between the two - on the hinged door.  The secondary release has a double exposure prevention mechanism fitted requiring the film to be would on before the shutter can be released a second time. On my camera, this does not work very well at the moment. When I had a similar problem on my Franka Solida II, it sorted itself out after a few shots.

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Being a folding camera, there needs to be a mechanism to bring the shutter/lens forward, ending with the lens exactly parallel to the film. On my camera this is defective - a small strut has snapped half way along its length. When I received the camera, this folding mechanism barely worked and then very badly - the lens ended up at quite an angle to the film plane.  This needed attention with naphtha to flush out dust and dirt, lubricating with clock oil and repeated folding/unfolding to free up the many joints in the struts.

Perkeo I - folded

It now unfolds easily and seems to put the lens parallel to the film plane, judging entirely by eye. The test film will tell me how parallel things actually are. The broken strut does not seem to matter here. What does not work too well is closing the camera. to close properly, the lens must remain parallel to the camera body otherwise it will not fit into the available space. I suspect that the broken strut is there is achieve this. Without this strut, my thumb has to do its duty. 

As an aside, I have tried a new technique with this camera. When lubricating small parts, it is quite hard to apply a small enough amount of oil to exactly the right place. Getting that small amount of oil into the linkage is a matter of working the linkage and hoping. This time I have diluted the clock oil two parts of oil to one part of naphtha to produce a very runny oil. Because the oil is diluted, once the naphtha has evaporated I am left with 2/3 of the amount of oil I applied. Also, because the oil is now very runny I am hoping that the oil will run between the surfaces of the linkages more easily before the naphtha evaporates to leave a very small amount of oil in place. So far, the only downside I have seen is that the naphtha is very good at wetting surfaces and has carried a small amount of oil over all the surfaces around the linkages. I am not convinced that this is a bad thing.

Perkeo I - showing top plate

Before loading the test film, there are two things I need to do. The first is to use compressed air to blow dust out of the inside. Moving film through a camera generates a small amount of static electricity and this will pull any dust onto the film. After that, I need to check the bellows for light leaks. To do this, I wait until dark (about five PM at the moment) and shine a torch onto the bellows at close quarters. Viewing inside the camera, any light leaks will clearly show.  I have found one very large one. That broken strut I mentioned earlier has scored the bellows material and created a line on pin-pricks. These will need sorting before I try the camera. Otherwise, the camera is good to go.