Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/12/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 01:26 AM 12/17/2008, Jim Nichols wrote: >Marc, > >I may be way off in my recollection of the camera. I recall that I either >got it in a trade for a revolver, or that I traded it for a revolver, can't >recall things that happened forty years ago in great detail. I do recall >that, in examining the camera, I found that, though there was no flash >fitting installed in the camera body, beneath the covering there was wiring >for a flash connection to the shutter mechanism. > >I can't recall the inscribed name, but seem to connect it to some model of >Contax or Practica. I don't recall anything about the lens except that I >could not find a way to remove it. It was my first encounter with an SLR >camera. > >Jim Nichols Dear God, my man, let's not ignite the fiirearms thread again! Most of the LUG-nuts seem to disapprove of such goings-on. It is difficult to sort out the various agencies under which the East German camera industries worked from 1945 to the later 1950's, so most students of such just identify them as "VEB Zeiss Ikon", a fine overall name but one historically inaccurate. VEB Zeos Ikon, if you will permit me the misnomer, did make some folding 35mm cameras with fixed lenses, and that is probably what you had. The Zeiss Ikon Contessa range were better cameras structurally, but the East German cameras were quite capable and sported, for the most part, CZJ Tessars. After some thought, might this have been a CZJ Werra I? That had a fixed lens. But I cannot think of a Contax or Pentacon badged camera with a fixed lens, though I will admit that my advanced age and feeble physicals keep me from diving into my relatively vast Stack of Stuff, to steal a line from Rush Limbaugh, to decypher this dispositively. I had to dig all of these books out a while back to answer Luis' post. Carl Zeiss Jena was a fascinating plant. It is today the situs for Zeiss' scientific production and design, telescopes and planetaria and the like. But it was once the navel of the optical world and deserves respect for this. And nearby is the original plant of the Schott und Genossen glasswerke, now again under the proper Zeiss Stiftung control. (Not to reignite the Egg Coddler thread of some years back, but that is where the recent production of Schott egg-coddlers emenated.) Yours in Zeiss! Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!