Welcome to Peter's

Zeiss Ikon page

ZEISS IKON'S Contax was launched in 1932 as a direct competitor to the Leica. It had a number of features which Contax fanciers say put it ahead of the Leica at the time, but in 1935 Leitz launched the improved Leica III and IIIa. These started to erode the sales of what was later known as the Contax I, particularly as there were rumblings by some users that this wasn’t quite as reliable as it should be. Zeiss-Ikon, however, hadn’t been resting on its laurels. In 1936 the Contax II appeared. It wasn’t just a revamp of the original Contax; it was almost a complete redesign.
     In place of the black-enamelled box-like original shape with the shutter speed dial mounted on the front, the body of the new model had the usual Zeiss Ikon bevelled corners, and the shutter speed dial was moved up on to

Many people regard the Contax II as Zeiss Ikon's  finest rangefinder

the top plate. The top plate, bottom plate and rangefinder front housing, which was now made in one piece with the lens mounting plate, were all finished in satin chromium plate. Very smart, modern and businesslike. There was delayed action via a lever on the front, and the top speed of the shutter was 1/1250sec in place of 1/1000 sec. The slowest speed was still 1/2sec, but users soon discovered that a 1 sec exposure could be made by using the delayed action with the shutter set on B, quite accurate prived the delayed action isn't slowed by old gummed oil.
     My Contax II is a very early production 1936 model, one of the first 1,000 I’m told, with vertical knurling on the wind knob rather than the cross-knurling of all the slightly later models. It’s fitted with a later lens, a 1938 50mm f/1.5 Sonnar. It’s the only lens I’ve got for it, and much as I would like to get a longer one to go with it, their price at the moment is more than I paid for the complete camera some nine or ten years ago.
      Compared with the simple cloth blind shutter of the Leica, the metal slat shutter on the Contax is a triumph of Zeiss Ikon mechanical ingenuity. It looks rather like the lid of a miniature roll-top desk, and runs vertically, across the 24mm dimension of the frame. Maybe the idea of a metal slat shutter wasn’t all that new inside the Zeiss Ikon design offices. I’ve heard it said that Dr. August Nagel was working on a metal slat shutter for tropical models of his Deckrullo shutter because the cloth binds were growing green fungus and proving appetising for numerous creepy-crawlies in hot and humid tropical atmospheres, but Nagel left Zeiss Ikon to branch out on his own again in Suttgart before the design got very far. Whether or not this is true, a legacy of Nagel’s design work with Zeiss Ikon, and before that with Contessa-Nettel, lived on in the Contax shutter speed control. The one-knob lift and twist action first appeared on the Deckrullo shutter and immediately made other makes of two-knob control of shutters on large format cameras obsolete.
     Some people fight shy of Contaxes because of the shutter. They don’t last for ever, and if they go wrong it’s not easy to find anyone who will repair them. This isn’t so much because they’re over-complicated. The tapes, which are usually the things that give trouble, aren’t all that difficult for a good camera mechanic to replace. But the thin brass slats of the shutter itself are carried on cords and are by now age hardened. If the ends have to be opened because new cords are needed there’s every chance they will break, and new slats aren’t available. Some people say you can repair the shutter with parts from a Kiev clone. Some repairers have even been known to replace the original Contax shutter with a complete Kiev unit which is said to be easier even though it might need a bit of fettling here and there.
Fortunately I haven’t had to try because the shutter on my Contax is performing faultlessly, and I’ve put quite a few films though since I’ve had it because I like using it. I suspect that the top speeds might be a shade on the slow side, but everything else seems to work fine. The satin chromium is in very good condition, but sometime during its life someone replaced the grained leather covering with plain smooth leather which didn’t suit the camera at all, and it wasn’t done particularly well. I’ve been looking for some leather with a suitable grain but so far haven’t been able to find any so I ended up by replacing the smooth leather a grained vinyl. If I ever come across some leather with a suitable grain I can always replace it, but I’m in no hurry as the camera looks quite smart.
     The f/1.5 lens is, I found, a trifle soft at the edges on full aperture, but it sharpens up at f/2.8 and is sharp right to the edges at f/4. I like using the Contax. It’s quite heavy but it’s got a solid reliable feel about it, and there’s no clunk or thump with it. The shutter whispers its exposures with a typical asthmatic wheeze. Loading is very easy because the back and base come off as one unit. In this respect it’s much easier to load than a screw-thread Leica. I like having the rangefinder incorporated in the viewfinder window and, once I got used to keeping my finger away from the rangefinder window, I liked the wheel focusing on the top plate. I would have liked a larger viewfinder eyepiece, but small eyepieces were usual on 35mm cameras in the 1930s.

THIS poor old thing really has been in the wars and neglected. I got it from a market dealer in general secondhand goods from whom I’ve bought several cameras. He found it in a damp cellar in a box of old paperback novels when he was doing a house clearance. He threw the books out, and was going to throw the camera out, but saved it for me in case I could get any useful bits from it. The price? A cup of tea and a bacon roll in the market café.
     The 520/2 gives 8 pictures on 120 film and was designed by Dr. August Nagel and made at the old Contessa Nettel factory in Stuttgart. It was launched in 1929, the first of a whole range of folding Ikontas and Super Ikontas, all with self-erecting lens panels. It also introduced the wedge-shaped bevelled ends to the body that became almost a Zeiss-Ikon trademark. This one’s a basic model Ikonta with an f/6.3 Novar lens in a dial-set Derval shutter with speeds of 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 sec plus B. At least, it should have three speeds plus B but at the moment it fires quite snappily but at only one speed, no matter where you set the dial.
     The aluminium body has suffered from its sojourn in the damp cellar. The leatherette covering is bubbling quite badly where the aluminium underneath has corroded, and one piece of leatherette on the side of the back is missing. The black enamelled edging to the body has seen very much better days.
     Even so, I was pleased to get it and I want to restore it because it’s a very early Ikonta. The Novar lens, somewhat unusually, has a serial number, 883218, which falls in that 1927-1928 gap in all the lists of Zeiss lens numbers I’ve seen. I’m not surprised about the lens being made a year or so before the camera. When a new camera’s being planned, a stock of lenses is often built up at least a year, and finished cameras several months before, launch date so stocks can be got out to dealers. I’m told by a Zeiss Ikon collector that the body serial number, P007682, is one of a very early production batch, probably in 1928.

IT MUST have been obvious within Zeiss Ikon that the Ikonta with its beautifully rigid self erecting front was the ideal base on which to build a high quality top of the market coupled rangefinder folding camera. This exactly what happened, and the Super Ikonta, the word Super being used in its camera context to indicate that it had a coupled rangefinder, was launched in 1934. It was a wise move,

Super Ikonta 530/2, the king of 6x9 folding  cameras, and much sought after.

and the Super Ikonta founded a dynasty of cameras with the same name which has become recognised as the prince - even the king - of top quality folding cameras.
     The rangefinder is beautiful piece of precision engineering. Mounted in a housing on the side of the body is a long, 6.5cm semi silvered/gilded optical glass prism with an eyepiece window at the back on the left, and two windows, one each end, at the front. Mounted on a swinging arm on the lens standard is the second part of the rangefinder, a pair of optical glass circular wedge prisms mounte3d tpo be in line with the right hand front window of the base prism. When a thumbwheel at the base of the swinging arm is turned these wedges contra-rotate. When the user looks through the basae prism he, or she, sees two images, one direct and one through the prism. By turning the thumbweel the twp images are brought together and, when they are superimposed the lesn is in focus because the thumbwheel is geared to the focusing front cell of the lens. It is a very accurate system with the accuracy made possible by the consistently accurate and rigid positioning of the lens standard when the camera is erected.
     As the /2 in the type number indicates, the 530/2 takes 120 film and has a choice of formats, 6x9 giving 8 pictures or, with a mask in the film plane, 6x4.5 giving 16 pictures. The viewfinder is built into the top of the base prism housing and is a Newton folding optical finder with a small masking plate held down by a catch. when the catch is released the plate pops up to mask off the finder for the 6x4.5 format. Two red windows are in the back of the body to give the choice of 8 or 16 pictures. The standard lens on the 530/2 is a 10.5cm f/4.5 Tessar mounted in a Compur arpid shutter with speeds from 1 to 1/400sec.
     I have two early Super Ikontas dating, according to the numbering of their Tessar lenses, from 1934 and 1935. Neither was immaculate but one was in good used condition and I have since restored the cosmetics. When I got the second one the thumbwheel for focusing was very stiff, the rangefinder calibration was all over the place and the body was rough to say the least. Refurbishing the body is no big deal, but I will have to strip and look at the rangefinder. I hope it has just slipped and nothing is broken but I won't know till I get inside it. I'll put what I find on My Repairs page.
     I've had some really crisp sharp pictures from the first one, and so did my late wife Valerie who used it to take a number of black and white pictures for magazine covers in the 1950s. It's not particularly fast to use, but I like using it because of the feeling of beautifully working precision quality. Unfortunately in both cases the film plane masks have been lost. I have a mask for a 6x9 Ensign but this doesn't quite fit. It's too far out to use but close enough to be annoying. The body serial numbers, for those who make a note of such things, are: for the 1934 model Y77179, and for the 1935 model Z66198.

IN THE early 1930s hiking was a popular pastime in Germany with hundreds of people packing a backpack and heading off out of the towns and into the countryside and mountains

Delightful and pocketable little 16 on 127

for a weekend break, or sometimes longer holidays. They wanted records of these trips out, a camera that wsn't a toy but would produce decent pictures yet be small enough to slip into a pocket or the side pocket of a backpack. In 1931 Zeiss Ikon catered for this by producing a Baby Ikonta, a sweet little folding camera that was cheap but well made. It measured only 2 1/2 x 3 7/8 inches by 1 inch thick when folded and was self er4ecting at the touch of a button. It was launched with a choice of f/6.3, f/4.5 or f/3.5 N f/6.3 Novar in a simple Derval shutter, and a year later these were joined by a pair of more upmarket models with f/4.5 or f/3.5 Tessar in a Compur. They didn't have the same system of strutting as the larger Ikontas, but a good strong self erecting spring ensured that the lens panel stayed firmly in its proper alignment. They took 16 pictures on 127 film. It stayed in production till 1935
     The one I have is roughly in the middle of the range with an f/4.5 front cell focusing Novar in a three-speed 1/25. 1/50 and 1/75 sec Derval shutter. There's a folding sheet metal frame finder on the body and, should you need to make B or T exposures there's a tripod bush on the other side.Frame counting is by the usual two red windows in the back. Mine still worls perfectly after anything from 71 to 75 years.The body number is T75182.

THIS, as its name suggests, is a Contessa Nettel design carried on by Zeiss Ikon after the 1926 amalgamation. The word Deckrullo related to the focal plane shutter, and means self-capping. It’s a sort of hybrid Franco-Deutsch word coined from the German word Decken, meaning to cover, and the French word Rouleau, or roller blind.
     To sidetrack for a moment, this shutter was an original Nettel design, though and was developed by Dr. August Nagel at Contessa Nettel who introduced the lift and turn one-knob speed setting. Dr. Nagel was one of the legendary yet strangely un-sung names in camera design. With the 1926 amalgamation he moved to Zeiss Ikon but left in 1928 to form his own camera making company again in Stuttgart. He sold this to Kodak in 1932, but stayed on as technical director. The Retina was one of his designs.
     By 1927, when Zeiss Ikon started making the Nettel, the shutter had been developed to give 13 speeds from 1/3 to 1/2000 sec plus B and T, all controlled by a single knob with a lift-and-turn rim. The camera was made in a variety of sizes, mostly with black leather covering, but was also offered as the Nettel Tropen, or Tropical, with the body made in teak.
     Mine is a Nettel Tropen, with a teak body

Picture to come

and nickel plated fittings. It takes quarter-plates (3 1/4 by 4 1/4 inches), and the focusing is scaled in feet. It differs from the Zeiss Ikon catalogue specification in that it has black leather bellows. The catalogue lists the Tropen with brown leather bellows. It’s a high quality camera, beautifully made, and it wasn’t cheap when it was new. It was listed in the Zeiss Ikon 1936 catalogue with an f3/5 Tessar at £61 17s 6d (£61.80). In the same catalogue you could get a Contax II with an f3/5 Tessar for £40 10s (£40.50), or with an f/1.5 Sonnar for £65 15s (£65.75).
     It’s difficult to date it accurately without a serial number dating list because it stayed in production till 1937. However, as the fittings are plated with nickel, not chromium, it’s probably no later than 1935. The serial number is 43584, so if anyone has a listing of Nettel serial numbers with dates, I’d be pleased to hear from them. The lens is carried on a detachable panel, with a small amount of rise and fall. It’s a 15cm f/3.5 uncoated Zeiss Tessar with the serial number 870779, and it looks as if I might be the original lens.
     The number is interesting because it falls in a gap in all the Zeiss lens serial number lists I’ve been able to find. They all end 1927 with the number 798251, and start 1928 with number 903096. Assembling lists like this after the war with the Jena factory almost in ruins must have been really difficult, and I assume that 870779 is one of the ‘lost’ numbers, probably 1928, so that may also be the date of the camera, but I can’t be certain.
The front of the camera comes forward on top and bottom lazy-tongs, and there’s an extra set inside the bellows at one side. The three sets of lazy-tongs give a very rigid front. Focusing is by a small knob at the side of the body, with a focusing scale from 3 feet to infinity set in the top of the body. In this scale is a knob which gives a quick release for fast opening and closing the bellows. When you press the knob, the front comes forward to the focus set on the scale. When you press it again, the front goes back, still at the focus setting.
     At the back, you can slide the whole focusing screen assembly out to use a wooden double book-form darkslide, or you can leave it in, open a quick-release door and put in a single metal slide. On the bottom rail at the back is a small shielded knob. When you press this it holds back the second blind so that when you wind the shutter knob, only the first blind opens. This saves you changing the speed to T for focusing. Pressing the shutter release brings the first blind down again with the shutter still set at whatever speed you chose. Ingenious, and very practical.
     My Tropen was quite dirty and neglected when I got it, and it showed signs a hard life and heavy use, but it’s cleaned up very well even though most of the original polish has gone from the wood.. It lacked the wire frame front of the open viewfinder, so I made a temporary one. I’ve since managed to find a genuine one, rather bent but I think it will straighten out OK.
     The wooden assembly for the focusing screen was starting to come apart at the joints, but a spot of glue and a clamp soon put that right, and one of the blind tapes was broken. As I hadn’t got a repair manual of any sort (I don’t know if there ever was one) I decided to take it apart and play it as it came, with some phone help from Zeiss in East Germany as it was then. The job turned out to be far less difficult than I thought and the shutter now works well though I don’t know how accurate the speeds are.

MY TWO Contaflexes aren’t, unfortunately, the pre-war twin lens reflex Contaflexes, they’re post-war leaf-shutter single lens reflexes. One is a Contaflex IV, first introduced in 1956, and the other is a Contaflex Super from about 1959. Unfortunately on this one the ASA film speed disc is missing from the little wheel just under the rewind knob, but as the meter doesn’t work it doesn’t really matter. It’s still a very nice camera. Both have f/2.8 Tessar lenses in Synchro-Compur shutters.
     On first thoughts the idea of a single lens reflex with a leaf shutter is an attractive one because it gives you flash synchronisation at all speeds even though you can’t get the very high speeds of a focal plane shutter. On second thoughts, a single lens reflex with a leaf shutter is one of those designs that make you wonder why the designers ever bothered.
     Compared with the simplicity of a focal plane shutter SLR with its ease of interchangeable lenses, the sheer complexity of a leaf shutter SLR boggles the mind. But then Zeiss Ikon

Complicated and heavy, but very smooth to use. This is the Contaflex IV.

always seemed to have a liking for complex mechanisms. So, when they decided to make a leaf-shuttered single lens reflex they had to go and complicate things even further, like Kodak with its first Retina Reflexes, by putting the shutter between the elements of the lens.
     Let’s start the sequence from the point where the shutter’s just been fired. Winding on the film first brings down the mirror as a light trap to save fogging the film. At the same time, the shutter has to cock and then, while the light trap is safely blocking any light from the film, the shutter blades open to allow reflex viewing with the lens at full aperture. When you press the release button, the shutter has to close, the mirror/light trap flips up out of the way, the iris closes to the aperture you selected and then the shutter opens and closes to make the pre-set exposure. And all this, with the already fairly complex Synchro-Compur shutter, takes place in less than 1/50 of a second according to Zeiss Ikon. Whew!
     Because Zeiss Ikon designed the Contaflex to have the shutter between the elements of the lens, they couldn’t provide fully interchangeable lenses without having a shutter with each lens, Hasselblad-style. This would have made owning several focal length lenses hideously expensive for the average amateur 35mm user, so Zeiss compromised. They made just the front element interchangeable, and called the lens a Pro-Tessar, though this isn’t always marked on it.
     The three different front elements are the standard one that gives a focal length of 50mm, a wide-angle one that gives the combination a focal length of 35mm, and a telephoto one. This makes the focal length of the combination 85mm. The standard Tessar is a four-glass lens, one in front of the shutter and iris and three behind it, with the rearmost two being a cemented pair. But with the pro-Tessar the shutter and iris are behind the second element. Both the wide angle and the tele front elements are five-glass designs which result in eight-glass combinations. Rather a lot of glass-to-air surfaces.
     I’ve got only the standard front element, so I can’t judge what the results are like with the other two, but test reports in photo mags of the 1950s rated them very highly. My results with the 50mm front element are excellent, with the lens, like all Tessars, probably being at its sharpest, edge to edge, around f/5.6, though the results at full aperture run this pretty close unless you want to make mural-sized prints
     Why Zeiss Ikon didn’t put the shutter behind the lens, as for example on the early Mamiya leaf shutter SLRs, I don’t know. I suppose there must be some optical drawback in not having the shutter between the elements, but provided the aperture iris is in the right place it surely can’t be all that much of drawback. The big advantage of the shutter behind the lens is that it makes interchangeable lenses, and cleaning old oil out of the shutter, so much easier and, let’s face it, most leaf shutters need this after 40-odd years.
     On the Contaflex IV there’s a built-in selenium exposure meter set in the top plate just below the rewind knob with a protective flap in front of it. The meter on mine still works, and agrees to within half a stop or so with the TTL meter on my Canon F1 and with a Leningrad hand-held meter which, surprisingly as it’s also selenium, doesn’t seem to have fallen off at all.
     The meter on the Contaflex Super is mounted on the front of the pentaprism housing, but on my example it doesn’t want to work at all. Not having the meter working doesn’t really worry me because I’ve never been a great fan of built-in non-TTL meters. To get a reasonably accurate reading for anything other than general landscape shots you have to take the camera right up close to the subject just as you would a hand-held meter, so it becomes a hand-held meter with a camera hanging on it.
     The other thing I’m not over keen on is a shutter with an EV locking ring. I know that once you’ve set the exposure value you can just turn the ring on the shutter to whatever speed you want to use and the appropriate stop follows it, or vice-versa. Fine for general shots, but if I want to change the stop or the speed independently, say for a back-lit shot, I’ve got to alter the EV setting. This is a pain because to alter it you have to push the EV locking ring backwards and then turn the EV control ring. The part by which you push the locking ring is small and sharply serrated. I find it clumsy to use, particularly in cold weather with cold fingers, and the serrations are far too sharp. Give me separate stop and speed settings, or maybe a choice of speed or aperture priority with a two-stop plus or minus over-ride, and I’m happy.
     That apart, I like using the Contaflexes. They’re very compact, quite small chunky looking cameras that surprise you the first time you pick one up because it’s much heavier than it looks. This is either because it’s packed with goodies, or it’s made of good honest metal. Probably a combination of both. I don’t regard weight in a camera as a bad thing as it helps to avoid camera shake, and the Contaflexes sit nicely in my hands. The viewfinders are nice and bright with a central split-image rangefinder prism that I like, and both of them are very smooth and quite quiet in operation with a subdued click-buzz-click. Loading and unloading a film is dead easy. The base and back comes off in one piece after you undo two lock keys, just as on a rangefinder Contax. A nice little touch is the provision of a small leaf spring on the fork that takes the take-up spool so it’s less likely to fall out in the mud when you’re changing films outdoors. If you want to use them, it will accept Contax self-opening cassettes.
Contaflexes aren’t so convenient to use, nor so versatile, as a modern SLR, but then they’re a 45-year-old design. I still get mine out once in a while when the mood takes me, and run a film through them.
     Quite recently the shutter on the Super has been misbehaving itself. It’s OK on speeds above 1/30 sec, but hangs about progressively as you go down the speed range till the 1 sec setting comes into the ‘eventually’ class (what did I say about needing a clean after 40-odd years?). If it were not for the complexity of the action cycle it would be a straightforward clean and lube job on a Synchro-Compur which I’ve done a number of times, but I’ve never been inside a Contaflex shutter so I don’t really know if it’s a straightforward or a complicated job. One day, when I’ve attended to all the other cameras waiting for attention, I might even find out.

THE Nettar 515/2 giving 8 pictures on 120 film was introduced as the Nettar 510/2, a cheap alternative to the Ikonta, and was sometimes called the poor man’s Ikonta though Zeiss Ikon advertised it as The Folding Camera for Everybody.
     It appeared in 1934 and was produced with various updatings, and a whole range of lenses and shutters, through till the early post war years. It was a nicely made camera and shared

Nettar 515/2 with an impressive chunk of glass.

the same body as the Ikonta with its self-erecting front which held the lens panel absolutely rigid where it ought be, perfectly parallel to the film plane. This no doubt helped the cheaper lenses to give their best, and I’ve seen some very nice pictures taken with this camera fitted with the popular f/6.3 Novar. Indeed, the only real difference between the 6x9 Ikonta and the 6x9 Nettar was the lens and shutter.
     In 1937 it was updated as the 515/2 with body

Nettar 515/16, a post-war revamp of  the range.

release, on the left hand side of the camera when you hold it horizontally, which mine has, and the serial number on the 1 to 1/400 sec Compur Rapid shutter dates it as either 1937 or 1938. It has an f/3.5 10.5cm Nettar Anastigmat lens, a quite impressive chunk of glass sitting there on the front, so it was probably a top of the range model. I can’t remember now where I got it, but it’s in fine condition and the shutter works smartly and smoothly on all its speeds. It’s got the usual tiny reflecting brilliant viewfinder on the lens panel, and also a flip-up sheet metal frame finder on the body. The camera serial number is stamped in the leatherette hidden by the frame finder until you open the back It is C61067.
    After the war Zeiss Ikon revived the name for what was really a different camera. Following what they'd done with the Ikonta, Zeiss Ikon went to a more compact horizontal layout taking 12 pictures 6x6cm on 120 film, and the camera became the 515/16. As usual there were several options of lens and shutter equipment, top of the range being the Signal Nettar which had double exposure prevention and a small red flag in rthe viewfinder to remind you whether or not you'd wound on.
    The one I've got is lower down the range with an f/4.5 Novar in a four-speed Pronto shutter. I picked it up quite cheaply because it was rather rough with a sticking shutter, chipped paintwork and one of the leatherette panels missing from the front, but it's restored OK and now looks quite smart. I couldn't quite match the grain on the leatherette so I had to replace both leatherette panels on the front to avoid it looking rather odd. Unfortunately this meant losing the small Zeiss Ikon logo in the original leatherette.
    The Novar is a triplet, not quite up to the standard of a Tessar, and seems to be at its best around f/5.6 or f/8. The four-speed shutter is a little restricting in low light situations unless you set it on B, put the camera on a tripod and stop down to give yourself a reasonable chance of guessing the exposure. I've heard people claim that they can judge 1/8 or 1/4 sec on B setting, but this is beyond me. The fastest I can judge by hand is a more or less 1/2sec. However, within its limitations it covers most of the pictures anyone's likely to take outdoors, and the camera can produce some excellent pictures.

THIS is another poor man's Ikonta using an old Ernemann name on the Ikonta body with a cheaper lens and shutter. It was introduced in 1938 and, except for the lens and shutter

Simple lens and shutter but excellent body quality.

is identical to the cheapest Nettar 510/2. Why Zeiss Ikon marketed an identical camera with a different name I'm unsure except I have read that the Nettar 510/2 was apparently sold only on the UK market so maybe Zeiss Ikon's marketing people thought it should be on the German market as well and revived the name Bob for it. All these folders were made in the ex-Contessa-Nettel factory in Stuttgart so the change didn't cost anything. Just a different name and number stamped in the leatherette. It has a very simple Gauthier shutter with two speeds 1/25 and 1/75 sec and a 10.5 Nettar Anastigmat scaled in metres and with a maximum aperture of f/7.7, so it's right in the bargain basement part of Zeiss Ikon's range of folders, but its build quality is the same as the Ikontas. The body serial number is D64752.

IN 1938 Xeiss Ikon revived an old Goerz name, Tenax, for two 35mm cameras giving 50 exposures 24x24mm and with 'quick firing' action. Both were announced in the 1938 catalogue,and the Tenax II was in dealers shops by mid

My pre-war Tenax I is a little rough cosmetically  but I've got everything working now.

summer. The Tenax I however, didn't reach dealers till early in 1939. The Tenax II was quite an up market camera with rotating wedge prism coupled rangefinder and interchangeable lenses, and you would naturally think that the Tenax I was a 'cooking' cheapened version of this. But it wasn't. It was a completely diferent camera, smaller and considerably cheaper with a fixed front-cell focusing lens and a folding optical viewfinder on the body.
     The only lens listed was a 35mm f/3.5 Novar which was mounted in a 1 to 1/300 sec Compur shutter. The quick firing used two levers, one on each side of the shutter. On the left as you held the camera was a large lever with a foldong top. One stroke of this set the shutter and wound on the film. One the other side was a much smaller lever for making the exposure. Zeiss Ikon claimed that you could take one picture a second. The camera was revived again after the war by VEB Zeiss Ikon, later renamed VEB Pentacon after the trade mark dispoute with Zeiss Ikon in Western Germany. This is seen more often than the original pre war Tenax I with its production cut short by the war.
     I have the pre war model but it isn't in the best of cosmetic conditions. It looks very well used with the topand bottom satin chromium plates rubbed through to the brass in several places. The leatherette is intact, but quite scuffed, and marked by the wind-on lever which has developed a little side play. However, now that I've fixed a spring under the top plate, which had become unhooked, it works very well. The serial number is H96800.

MY CONTINA is a model IIa with a fixed 45mm f/2.8 Novicar lens. It doesn't have the built-in rangefinder of the model II, but has a built-in uncoupled selenium meter built in the top plate with a small hinged flap with very small

Contina IIa with exposure meter.

slots in it should the light be so bright as to send the needle off the scale when the flap is up. I'm not normally a lover of built-in uncoupled meters, particularly the ones that sit under a hump on the top plate and look like an afterthought - which they probably are. But the one in the Contina is neat, and has a nice large needle viewing window in the top plate. The front flap also serves when it's up to shield the meter from a bright sky. The needle is calibrated in light values, and after setting the film speed you turn a knob next to the needle window to the indicated light value and read the exposure off. It's not as fast to use as the type where you match an indicator needle with the pointer needle, but it works OK. The readings agree very closely with readings from my other meters, and when I ran a test roll through the camera I found it quite useful. Film wind-on is by a stubby little lever recessed into the top plate, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the centre part of the top plate is extended upwards to house the meter and viewfinder. There's an accessory shoe, but it's not a hot shoe. Flash connection is via the standard co-axial socket on the front of the body.
     I bought it privately in its ever-ready case, and though the case shows a few scuffs the camera itself really is in excellent condition and works faultlessly. The Novicar lens is set in a 1 to 1/300 sec Prontor SVS shutter which is as near accurate as I can judge on all its speeds. I found the Novicar just a shade soft right in the corners at f/2.8 but you have to look closely at a 7x5 inch print to see it. At f/4, one stop down, it's sharp all over. The serial number for those who collect them is H24628.