Nagel Vollenda 48

I have a very small Nagel Vollenda 48 camera in good condition with a Xenar 3.5 lens. The lens barrel bears the following inscription: Jos. Schneider & Co Kreuznach No447874 Xenar f:3,5 F= 5cm. Also unusual are the cold shoe and small focus scale.
Can anyone identify the model? Could this be a later third-party modification?

I created a thread in the wrong place. Dear moderators, please move this thread.

I don’t think these features are that unusual. The xenar was a higher tiered lens option over the radionar triplet these are often found with. The cold shoe would have probably been for an accessory rangefinder and the small focus scale as you put it is probably the depth of field calculator.

They are for 127 film, and produce 3x4cm images. The front focus Xenar lens is quite good when calibrated. I have one and like its compactness.

The cold shoe may have been an optional accessory from the factory, or it may have been an add-on later in its life. The depth of field scale calculator would be stock.

retina_restoration said:

The cold shoe may have been an optional accessory from the factory, or it may have been an add-on later in its life. The depth of field scale calculator would be stock.

Click to expand...

Hunter_Compton said:

I don’t think these features are that unusual. The xenar was a higher tiered lens option over the radionar triplet these are often found with. The cold shoe would have probably been for an accessory rangefinder and the small focus scale as you put it is probably the depth of field calculator.

Click to expand...

The Jos. Schneider & Co. Kreuznach signature indicates an earlier Xenar, as many of the ones I found online no longer had the same signature. Was a cold shoe installed when these cameras were released? Because it looks like it's a factory modification.

Mine looks like this (the middle one). It has no cold shoe, but a DoF scale. Also mine has the Radionar triplet lens, a more budget lens compared to the Xenar.

Compact for its format by Zheng, on Flickr

miki0 said:

I created a thread in the wrong place.

Click to expand...

blee1996 said:

They are for 127 film, and produce 3x4cm images.

Click to expand...

I'll leave it in its present place for now; 3x4cm is kind of in-between MF and 35mm anyway, so...no worries @miki0 and thanks for sharing!

PS: if you want to ask about moving a thread, alert us to a problem with a post etc. please use the 'report' function below the post:

Dr. August Nagel had been one of the founders of Contessa-Nettel which later merged with ICA, Ernemann, Goerz. to form Zeiss Ikon in 1926, with the Zeiss Foundation being the major shareholder. It was a merger forced on the smaller companies who were struggling to compete due to the economic situation in Germany.

Nagel left, founding Nagel in 1928, he didn't use Zeiss lenses, and chose Schneider instead, then quite a small lens company. While relatively successful, Nagel sold the company to Kodak in 1931. They expanded the export of cameras made in the Nagel factory, particularly to North America, a consequence was Schneider's expansion and the introduction of newer lens like the Angulon, and fast S-Xenar

Your camera is one of the last before the Kodak takeover.

Ian

I had a Nagel Vollenda 52, also with Xenar lens, it was 127 film camera shooting 4x6.5cm pictures.