Centenary Lakes

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">A few days ago Cliff Manley took his 521/16 Zeiss folder with the f4.5 Novar out for a stroll and posted some stunning results. That post inspired me to knock the dust off my 521/2 (8 exposures per roll) with the f4.5, 10.5cm Novar lens and give it a bit of exercise. I am quite pleased with the results. I am going to take it out again and use a tripod and cable release on the next outing just to see what it is capable of producing. Cliff, if you are reading this, please let me know how you disabled the double exposure lock (yes, I forgot to cock the shutter once and ended up with only seven exposures). The following shots were taken using Delta 100 at 1/200 @ f8, then developed for 11 minutes in D-76.</p><div></div>

<p>#2</p><div></div>

<p>#3</p><div></div>

<p>#4</p><div></div>

<p>Looks good, nice smooth tones in your B&W. We may have to set up a Novar appreciation society!<br>

Tony</p>

<p>Wonderful job Stuart, I just put Zeiss folder w/ Novar at the top of my wish list. Also wish i had some of that weather ..it's a 'snow day' here.</p>

<p>Beautiful sharp clear shots. And as Franklin pointed out, you certainly don't live in the midwest.</p>

<p>Great shots Stuart, I love the tones and how sharp the images turned out. Are you getting 6x9 format out of this camera? I have the Zeiss Ikonta folder 520/ 15 which takes 6.5 x 11 cm. Gorgeous cameras.</p>

<p>Really Fine stuff ! Nice tones in the B&W! Mihai is yours a 120 camera? Sounds like a format I don't know!!</p>

 

<p>Hi Stuart,<br>

Very nice photos. I was trying to decide which I liked the most, but I like them all.<br>

The disassembly and cleaning of all of the parts inside the double exposure housing is usually needed since they get dirty and don't turn smoothly. Some of them actually sound like they are grinding when you turn them. The fiber friction ring also gets distorted and not flat anymore, which I hone on a diamond stone on both sides. This makes the winder smooth as silk again. The locking plate that engages the shutter release plunger needs just that protruding corner removed in a slight arc. When you put it all back you have a nice slick, smooth winder that is forever fixed for that silly lock, but still shows the red wind indicator which is helpful.<br>

The standard procedure before these locks came out was to cock, shoot and wind, always winding right after a shot. If you do that with these locking cameras, and the button gets pushed in the camera bag, when not cocked, or otherwise, you're kind of stuck, like August said, with sticking your finger in there to trip the shutter. I think it is better just to eliminate the unnecessary problem.<br>

Cliff</p>

<p>Activating the trigger at the shutter is especially easy with the 6x9s, there's lots of room up front even for big-fingered guys like Cliff. :)<br>

BTW regarding the sequence of operations, the best sequence, especially with the 6x9s is to wind just before the shot, not after. Specifically, always wind after opening the bellows for the shot -- it ensures film flatness in case the film bulged out from the vacuum created when opening the bellows. That goes whether you have a double exposure lock or not, but it also helps reducing inadvertent locking between shots.<br>

Mihai's camera is for 616 film. I've got one also, converted for 120 which makes it only a 5.5x11 now. </p>

<p>Hi Mihai,</p>

<p>Yes this camera takes eight 6X9 exposures on 120 film.</p>

<p>Cliff,</p>

<p>Thank you for the instructions. This isn't the first time that I have forgotten to cock the shutter. That's one of the problems with having so many cameras and then using them sporadically.</p>

<p>Let me add that the D-76 was diluted 1:1.</p>

<p>No, this is certainly not the midwest, it's OZ! As Dorothy said in the Wizard of OZ, "Well Todo, we're not in Kansas anymore"!</p>

<p>Here is a picture of the part after the mod.</p><div></div>

<p>"A picture is worth a thousand words", THANKS!</p>

<p>These old folders are fun and produce great results. I think your camera is essentially the same as my post-war "Russian Occupied Zone" Zeiss Ikon (Jena) Ercona. I had posted some shots of the camera and its results <a title="here" href="00RdUU" title="here">here</a> .</p>

<p>JDM,</p>

<p>You're absolutely right. The two cameras are nearly identical. One manufactured in the east and the other in the west.</p><div></div>

<p>At least some Ikonta C 521/2 were made in the Russian-occupied zone after the war, but while Zeiss Jena was still stamping the cameras with Zeiss Ikon (like my Ercona, which I thought might be an Ikonta until I found a faint stamp saying the name on the back), they started using the later name. Later models of the Ercona had a non-folding viewfinder.<br /> Here is the ad in the catalog <em>Reiche Auswahl--Kameras aus Dresden </em> (1955, I think)</p>

<p>Hmm, in an edit, the attachment got inadvertently deleted. Here it is.<br>

I should add, that my version of the camera seems to be only 6x9 and does not have a provision for the mask (only one red window on the back) for the 6x6 mask mentioned in the ad.</p><div></div>

<p>As the ad points out, it was Zeiss Ikon DRESDEN, not Jena. Carl Zeiss Jena made lenses and it's western analog is in Oberkochen. Zeiss Ikon Dresden made cameras, as did Zeiss Ikon Stuttgart (until it's demise in the early '70s). As far as I know a remnant of the eastern branch of ZI continues as Pentacon GmbH.</p>

<p>In 1955, Zeiss at Dresden in the "Russian-Occupied Zone" (as the Wessies called it) still used the Zeiss Ikon name. This later was changed to VEB Zeiss Ikon and Zeiss Jena, but it's all the same company. Jena's about 200 km west of Dresden. Zeiss Jena was merged with KW, Ihagee, and all the rest and ended up as VEB Pentacon. Dr. Mike Otto on his famous Praktica page has a chart at <a href="http://www.praktica-collector.de/Pentacon.htm">Pentacon Chart</a> of the course of the mergers, etc. After reunification (as the Wessies call it), Pentacon survives in the form of Japanese-made Exakta and Praktica P&S cameras, but the Noble family did get at least some of the old KW facilities back and make a panorama camera (the Noblex) and some other items under the old <a href="http://www.kamera-werk-dresden.de/index_eng.htm">KW name</a> .</p><div></div>

<p>Actually, Zeiss Ikon Dresden, later VEB Zeiss Ikon, first changed the name of it's premier product from "Contax D" to "Pentacon" [an acronym for PENTAprism CONtax] for sale in Western markets. Eventually the name of the company was changed as well. Things got more complicated when they were combined with the other Dresden camera makers (Ihagee and KW). Carl Zeiss Jena, later VEB Carl Zeiss Jena) kept using that name (although it's products were re-badged , at various times, CZ Jena or Aus Jena for sale in some western countries) and was separate (to the extent that any state-owned concern could be considered separate). To complicate things even more, there were east and west versions of the Zeiss Stiftung, the foundation that controlled both the lens and camera companies (as well as east and west branches of Schott Glass.I believe that the present Pentacon GmbH is owned by Schneider while VEB Carl Zeiss Jena was partially purchased by Carl Zeiss (Oberkochen).</p>

<p>There were other photography-related companies split by the cold war, such as Agfa Leverkusen and Agfa Wolfen--later ORWO (ORiginalWOlfen).</p>

<p>By the way, the story of the Nobles and the KW plant would make a good book or movie.<br>

Some bare facts are given at <a href="http://www.retrography.com/kw.htm">KW site</a> .<br>

They helped the original Jewish owners of KW, then after WWII spent time in Communist prisons in east Germany, then to final return.</p>

<p>A little more about the Nobles and KW, from Marc James Small, a well-known historian of photographic manufacturers who seems to see them in a less heroic light:</p>

<p><tt>John Noble, the former owner of the Noblex firm, has died. His obituary appeared in the Washington (US) Post on Saturday, 17 NOV 2007….<br /> <br /> I can discuss the Noble family in some detail (and have done so, in print and on other fora). They were an interesting family of quasi-USian Nazis who ended up getting it in the neck from the Nazis, the Communists, the US government and, in the end, from the Free Enterprise system. This noble was a member of the Knights of Malta and always insisted on being addressed as "Sir John". He contacted me a decade or so back by e-Mail and wished me to assist him in getting others to help him gain public acceptance that he still owned his factory, long after the banks had foreclosed on it. It was rather pathetic. Allow me to explain to those who do not know me that "Sir John" contacted me due to my being a bit of a scholar on the German camera industry and not out of any neo-Nazi nexus nor from any membership in the putative Knights of St John of Malta, that trifurcate Order. The short story is this: when the Nazis were dunning the Jews, business owners were forced to sell at a pittance to "suitable" Aryans. Around 1937, the father of "Sir John", a German-born US citizen, forced the Guthe and Thorsche families to sell him the Kamerawerkstatten camera works in Dresden to him. He had owned a small to-order printing plant in Cleveland, and one of them (I forget which at this hour of the night, and me without much sleep!) got the printing plant, and the other got a pittance of cash with which they founded a camera store somewhere in the City of Lost Angels. To my knowledge, both families flourished and a friend has promised to check out the LA camera store to see if there are still any members of the original family about. Around 1943, despite the open Nazi sympathies of the Noble family, the Nazis expropriated KW and imprisoned them. Then came the Communists, who refused to return the plant on the grounds that it had been nationalized before they came to take over the Soviet Zone of Occupation. The Noble family fought hard for years to gain recompense but they were tainted by a pro-Nazi past. Most of the rest is too Post-war to be of interest here. KW went on to become the original concern in what was later to become the Pentacon concern which, by the 1980's, had absorbed the East German side of Zeiss Ikon, Hugo Meyer, the Otto Schott und Genossen glassworks at Jena, and even mighty Carl Zeiss Jena. In the aftermath of the reunion of the Germanies, the real (West German) Zeiss brokered a deal to recover control of their former holdings, and so they got back most of what had been theirs, while "Sir John" got the Noblex works, a single factory where he produced a super wide-angle medium-format camera. Alas, once the parts on hand ran out, he went bankrupt. I grieve the death of any person but he was a strangely troubled man from a strangely troubled family and let it just sit at nil nisi bonum mortuis. Much as I feel a distaste for that ultimate Milquetoast, Cicero, his words work well here.<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> </tt></p>

<p>Wow, that's quite a story. There will likely be similar stories when the Bankers foreclose on the U.S. and sell off, nationalize, and communize this nation.</p>

<p>I'd like to thank everyone for their kind words and JDM and Robert for their contributions to this post. It has been quite informative.</p>