Best Folder under $100

Zeiss Ercona, now, that Tessar is razor sharp!


Image from UKCamera.com


Cheers

I have several different folders, everything from Pearls & Isolettes to Super Ikotas, but for pure simplicity at about $15 - $25, I have more fun with the little Japanese Zenobia than just about anything.

Like ntenny said early on in this thread, one of those little rangefinders will be a helpful accessory.

Smiff

I've got rather a lot of folders, after a hunt in the loft at the weekend I 'discovered' quite a few I'd forgotten about!

So far this month I've put a film through a Voigtlander Perkeo, Agfa Silette II and Zeiss Ikonta. The Ikonta wins hands down on optical quality, not a fair comparison as it has a Tessar wheareas the others have cheaper lenses, but it also seems to be ergonomically the nicest to use and seems to have stayed in better condition. It has all of it's leatherette still intact, has smooth focussing and aperture and nothing leaks
The other two are the same vintage but don't seem to have stood up quite so well. Obviously, they may have had a harder life...

The Agfa seems to produce great images, despite looking a little battered.

The Perkeo looks very nice, nearly as good as the Ikonta except it can't seem to keep it's leatherette on... but alas this camera is incapable of taking a sharp picture. I don't know why yet, I suspect it isn't typical, many APUGers have rated the Perkeo very highly, but alas mine is a lemon

Two I haven't tested yet are a brace of Agifolds. One is the most mint, pristine, 'looks brand new' folding camera I've seen. It's beautiful. The other looks like it was fished out of a canal. Rusty, battered, paint missing, leather coming off, fungus in the optics...

My point is that with cameras so old, condition is everything. I think mostly all of them can give a good account of themselves if in good condition.

Many of the cameras with the better lenses command a higher price, much higher still with built in rangefinders and meters. I personally think the huge hike in price is not justified by the modest advantage of built in widgets. Any lightmeters will be useless now, anyway. They are best left to the collectors. You can easily pick up a flash shoe fitting rangefinder. If you can get a high spec Ikonta under $100 I'd be suspicious, it is probably not a good buy, but you could get a very basic spec Nettar for well under half that in absolutely mint condition. If you can get a mint basic spec camera with a 'one up from the basic' lens on it, you are onto a winner.

steven_e007 said:

I personally think the huge hike in price is not justified by the modest advantage of built in widgets.

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Well, with *coupled* rangefinders I get it---it's a pretty big advantage not to have to take the time to transfer the measurement to the lens, worry about whether the camera you're carrying today is in feet or metres or cubits or what, interpolate between scale marks, and so on. But wrt meters and uncoupled rangefinders, I agree completely.

-NT

ntenny said:

Well, with *coupled* rangefinders I get it---it's a pretty big advantage not to have to take the time to transfer the measurement to the lens, worry about whether the camera you're carrying today is in feet or metres or cubits or what, interpolate between scale marks, and so on. But wrt meters and uncoupled rangefinders, I agree completely.

-NT

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Oh, for sure a Super Ikonta with a coupled rangefinder is a beautiful thing, I wish I had one.

But alas, probably well out of his $100 bracket in mint condition - at least it would be where I live.

You can sometimes get deals on the Agfa Isolette III (uncoupled rangefinder) for less than $100. And the Soviet cameras are less expensive than the German cameras.

A yard sale, boot sale or thrift shop might yield your best option for finding a medium format rangefinder camera for less than $100.

If you'll be shooting mostly landscapes, then it's not essential to have a rangefinder. If you'll be shooting portraits and such, then a rangefinder is a nice tool to have.

I bought this Super Ikonta C for $150. It was very dusty but underneath the decades of dust was an excellent camera.

Steven they are beautiful, to my mind, compared to some other unit focusing cameras they produce noticeably lesser quality images, but they are just so dam nice, kinda like an old steam train with all the little bits that open up before you can take a shot, or maybe even like the borg from star trek with bits hanging off in all directions haha

When it comes to value for money, coupled rangefinder or not, meter or not, unit focusing or not, uncoupled rangefinder or not, etc etc..I would more or less agree with Nathan. As always with photography gear small improvements usually relate to big price increase, coupled rangefinder the benefits can be worth while, uncoupled less so, meter none really, unit focusing is to me, but can depend on individual use. quality I construction I value, and although there are quite a few recommendations so far that I wouldnt disagree with, I like the Weltax with Tesser, though it comes in triplets as well that are useful, because it is quality built, one of the best lenses, simple operation, and has parallax finder which is very handy for those portrait shots etc

As I understand it the front cell focussing Tessar is a complete unit with a supplementary focussing lens stuck on the front. I believe this is how my Tessar works on the Ikonta (but I'm not stripping a perfectly good lens down to make sure!)
The triplet lenses have a moveable front element which is an integral part of the lens design (one of the 'three' that makes the triplet), which means the lens has to compromise quite a bit on correcting aberrations.

BUT! It does mean there are only 6 glass air surfaces in the triplet, as oppssed to 8 in the front cell focussing Tessar and less glass overall. This means that the Triplet might be less sharp when wide open or focussd close, and have a bit of vignetting when wide too, but should in theory have better contrast and maybe less flare, especially if uncoated. It might also be a bit 'faster' for a given aperture. Stopped down well and used at or near infinity one might well give a good account of itself against a front cell focussing Tessar. Obviously the Tessar should be the clear winner at bigger apertures or closer work.... Well, maybe
Obviously a moveable unit focussing Tessar should be best of all. The only folder I have with one of these is a 35mm.

I've got a lot of 6 X 6 folders with triplets and a couple (alas not as many as I'd like) with better lenses. I hope to do some critical side by side comparisons over the next few weeks to see if these theoretical differences can be seen in practice.

As I understand it the front cell focussing Tessar is a complete unit with a supplementary focussing lens stuck on the front.

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Steve, nothing supplementary about it really, it is the front element, that moves in exactly the same way as the triplets do to focus, this is how it is on a S/Ikonta or any ZI. do a search for a tessar layout and you notice that is the rear elements that is a cemented pair

BUT! It does mean there are only 6 glass air surfaces in the triplet, as oppssed to 8 in the front cell focussing Tessar and less glass overall.

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leading on from my above comment...the Tessar is a 4 element lens in 3 groups, the rear 2 elements are cemented together, as such the tessar has 6 surfaces (normally, when we talk lens talk we would say 2 air glass surfaces, we dont count the external surfaces )


you wont find a unit focusing tessar (or other lens) on ZI folder from around the mid 30's on, some other makers did though

Hi Anastigmat,

I'm familiar with the Tessar configuration, that is why I said it has 6 air / glass surfaces, the same as a triplet. It would become 8 IF it had an additional supplementary lens for focussing.

Personally I have always counted the all the surfaces in the lens, I've not encountered the practice of omitting the front and rear, but maybe I don't mix in the right optical circles
Refraction/ reflection takes place at every interface where light passes through a boundary between different optical densities, including the front and rear surface. When assesing a lenses performance you can take a guess at the light loss depending on whether it is multiple, single or un-coated (say, 1, 5 and 10% -ish) and multiplying the losses by the number of air / glass surfaces. Leaving out the front and rear would give a simple meniscus lens "0" interfaces and no losses, which doesn't sound quite right to me!
You are, of course, at liberty to count them any way you wish

I have read somewhere (I must confess I can't now find where...) that the front cell focussing Opton Tessar had a supplementary focussing lens - a fifth piece of glass - on the front.
You may well be right that it is focussed the same as the simpler triplets by varying the seperation between the from two element, but if this is the case then I am dissappointed, as this will clearly mean quite a compromise in the correction compared with a conventional unit focussed Tessar. As I said, I'm not intending to dismantle the Tessar to find out!

Steve, the supplementary focussing lens you read about is referring to the close up or 'focar' lenses that fit on as a supplementary lens (like a filter) for close up or portraiture work.

I have worked on many of these lenses so I can confirm that there are 4 elements in 3 groups on the Tessar, front cell focusing or fixed unit. and yes it does affect its quality if compared, but in general use many obviously found it to produce very acceptable results.

Really its just semantics arguing about how lens elements/air surfaces are described, I am simply relating how the lenses are also usually described in the literature from the old companies for these lenses, they rarely talk about how many surfaces the lens has, more about groups, air spaces (between the elements) and number of elements, its the same result, so that all that matters...just for interests sake you might like to know that Zeiss Ikon claims in their literature that the coated Tessar now collects around 35% more light than the previous uncoated versions

Cheers
A/