Box-Tengor 54/2 - what a thing!

[eumenius]

Hello friends,
today I gave another fat chance to those rumouring about me having too many cameras For $5 I've picked up a Box-Tengor 55/2, in a fine condition - almost like new, especially when cleaned well. Fully working.
An unusual model - with three apertures and three focus distances (1-2, 2-8, 8-inf - meters, probably?), but the front plate is not hexagonal - it's round, like in newer models. Okay, I loaded it with some Fortepan 100 film... can it be SO unsharp? I'm going to check the infinity position tomorrow, but it looks like there's no way to adjust the infinity or to have it gone off somehow - the whole camera is quite rigid. Does anyone have any experience with Box Tengors? Or the achromatic Frontar f11 just can't do anything sharper without, say, a yellow filter? Anyway, the camera is very cute... but I love to shoot with all cameras I've got. Can it be any sharper, or should I be happy with current results?

Cheers, Zhenya

 

[Donald Qualls]

The Box Tengor is arguably the best 120 size box camera ever made. The lens is much better than the simple meniscus in most later, simpler, cheaper box cameras (it *is* a Zeiss, after all). It needs no filter for B&W, and can also be used with color. Since focusing is by sliding diopters into the optical path, there's really nothing to get out of adjustment; if the box hasn't been crushed, it should still have the original factory setting.

However -- it's very possible someone has messed with it and (for instance) got the lens in backward, which would put it very significantly out of focus. There were a couple different lenses sold in Box Tengors at various times, but none were triplets AFAIK; all the lens elements or groups should be concave toward the aperture and shutter. Reversing one will throw the focal plane off by about twice the thickness of the meniscus element, as well as introducing field curvature and spheric aberration.