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OIGTLÄNDER in Braunschweig was an old and well respected company going right back to the early days of photography. The company produced a vast range of cameras from the early 1900s to the 1960s catering for almost every type of photographer from the professional and 'serious' amateur to the family man who took his camera out only on holidays.
      The name is still alive today, but with the gradual demise of the once powerful German camera industry Voigtländer linked first with Zeiss Ikon and now with the Japanese camera industry.

IN THE 1930s Voigtländer produced several ranges of 9x6 folding cameras. Probably the best known is the Bessa range, but there was also the Avus, Inos and some which appear to have gone under the generic name of Rollfilmkameras. They all had similar specifications and often looked very similar.
     This is one which I can only assume is one of the Rollfilmkameras because as far as I've been able to discover it doesn't tie in exactly with any of the named ranges, and as most of the leatherette covering was missing when I got it there was no name to identify it except for the Voigtländer plate on the Compur shutter. I was given it as a restoration challenge, and it was without doubt in the worst condition of any camera I've had, but I accepted the challenge to save it going to the rubbish tip and have described its restoration on My Repairs page.
     It's quite a well made medium price folder, typical of the 1930s, on which the front pulls down to form a baseboard and the lens standard pulls out to slide along it on rails. The standard clicks on a small chariot at the front of the rails, and focusing is by a lever on the side which moves the chariot back and forth.
     The lens is an f/4.5 Skopar which, now it's cleaned, gives nice sharp pictures and copes very well with modern colour print film. An example taken with it is in My Repairs. The lens is set in a 1 to 1/250 sec Compur shutter. Going by the serial number on the shutter it was made in 1933. There's the usual small reflecting brilliant finder on the lens standard, and a fold-out metal frame finder with a matching folding sheet metalfame on the body. I think the camera was intended for the home market rather than export as the exposure guide table on the back is in German

THE Bessa range of 9x6 folders started in 1931, ran right through till the war and was revived again after the war. I have a quite basic Bessa I which, from the style of the shutter front plate is either late 1930s or early post war.

Entry level Voigtländer Bessa

It takes either eight 9 x 6 cm pictures or sixteen 6 x 4.5 cm with a mask which, unfortunately, and like many, is missing. There's the usual arrangement of two red windows in the back for 16 pictures. Turning a button brings a shutter across the windows to protect panchromatic film. At least there should be a knob but this has been replaced by a small plate and a screw which is quite fingernail breaking so you need a small screwdriver. This shutter across the windows possibly dates it as pre-war when the backing papers on panchromatic film were not so opaque to bright light as they are today. The front self-erects very smartly when you press a catch on the body.
     The lens is a quite lowly10.5cm f/6.3 Voigtar with front cell focusing. It's mounted in an un-named Gauthier four-speed shutter giving 1/25sec to 1/125sec plus the usual B&T. It's quite likely a four-speed Prontor or one of that family. You don't have to cock it, but it has delayed action which is a little on the sluggish side but as the speeds all seem to work well I haven't bothered to go inside and clean it. The shutter release is a trigger on the baseboard that retracts when you fold the camera ands works very smoothly. Once again there's the usual small reflecting finder at the front, but I imagine most people used the quite good folding optical finder on the body which flips down with a neat cover over it. It's very well made with a quality that shows it was made for higher grade lenses and shutters but also offered with the basic ones I've got as a cheap bottom of the range 'entry level' model.

THE Vitoret was introduced in the 1960s as an inexpensive version of the solid bodied

The basic Vitoret of the 1960s was inexpensive, but it did what it was made to do, take colour slides of families and holidays for projection.

Vito, aimed at the family man, but though there was obvious cost cutting it still retained a lot of the Vito's qualities of being well designed and well made. The quite deep top plate is clean looking with just the rewind knob, an accessory shoe and the rewind clutch button. The rewind lever is set under the top plate and the frame counter is on the bottom. There's a big brightline viewfinder, very easy to use with spectacles, and with markings to indicate parallax at close distance.
     The shutter is a rim set Prontor 125 with speeds of 1/30, 1/60 and 1/125 sec. There's no delayed action but there is a co-axial flash socket on the side of the shutter. It carries a 50mm f/2.8 front cell focusing coated Vaskar lens, a triplet that first appeared as f/4.5 but was later redesigned to open up to f/2.8 to compete with many triplets of the time. I haven't run a film through it, but Amateur Photographer rated it as a good example of its type, a little soft at the edges at full aperture but sharpening up nicely at f/5.6. The shutter release, in common with many cameras of this period as it came as a package deal with the Prontor, is a sliding button on the front of the camera. This isn't my favourite type of release, but the one on the Vitoret works smoothly even though it is a little heavy to use.
      More upmarket versions of the Vitoret had a built-in meter and coupled rangefinder. These models, in common with some models of the Vito, had the f/2.8 Color-Lanthar, again a triplet but using later rare-earth glass.