Sharpest 120 Folder?

[summicron1]

I'll echo the Mamiya 6, not because I have the prints to prove it but because my "new" one just arrived and I hope to have the prints to prove it.

I'll echo the Mamiya 6 as well. let me see if I can find a print ...

 

[moto-uno]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned an Iskra 1 . The lens is really sharp and the rangefinder is great !
Another choice I've has great success with is my Welta Weltur , an uncoated lens , yet many sharp slides from it .
Both feel solid in the hand . They fall well within your budget , why would you consider one without a coupled rangefinder ?
Peter

 

[Auer]

why would you consider one without a coupled rangefinder ?
Peter

Zone focussing is liberating.
Also, if size matters there are some non RF folders out there that very comfortably will fit in the front pocket of a pair of Levi's.

 

[cptrios]

Great replies, everyone! I had looked at the Mamiya Six before, but a lot of the Flickr shots didn't really move me much. I really like how the Autocord draws...sigh. I have a distinct feeling that all of this is going to end with me getting a 4x5.

 

[Ariston]

Great replies, everyone! I had looked at the Mamiya Six before, but a lot of the Flickr shots didn't really move me much. I really like how the Autocord draws...sigh. I have a distinct feeling that all of this is going to end with me getting a 4x5.

I have an Autocord, too. Not as easy to carry around, but its lens is at least as good as the Mamiya’s. I wouldn’t say it is head and shoulders better, though. It would be hard to tell the difference if both took the same photo.

 

[JPD]

Are you sure about the Selfix 820? I ask because I've never got a satisfactorily sharp shot with mine, even on tripod. The lens is in collimation and the focusing scale seems to be correct. See http://www.filmstillphotography.com/ensign-selfix-820.html for a review that agrees with me. It has one thing wrong, the lens is 105/3.8 Xpres in Epsilon shutter. The shutter is supposed to be flaky. Mine has behave well, so far but with very little use. Overall, a Century Graphic is a better tool, and many of them have, unlike the Selfix 820, a coupled rangefinder.

Mine was good, sharp and the Epsilon shutter worked as it should. There are some bad Tessars and Xenars as well on folders and even in Rollei TLR cameras. Most are excellent, but a few are mediocre.

How about these, taken with Xpres 3,8/105:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/argyllphotos/49817500997/in/photostream/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/31253629@N08/33349088820/

I have sold the Selfix and most of the other 6x9 folders I had and kept the Ercona II with Tessar, the E-Bessa with Heliar and Goerz Roll-Tenax with Dagor. The Ercona II is the sharpest of those three, but the Heliar and Dagor are fun lenses.

 

[xtolsniffer]

Depends if you want 'sharp' or 'character'. Even some of the pre-war Ikon Nettars can be very sharp in the center, and that's just a simple triplet. This is an Ikon Nettar 515/2 with an f6.3 Nettar and Telma shutter from 1939.

 

[Alex Varas]

Super Isolette is the sharpest of all my folders.

 

[Dan Daniel]

No mention of the Bessa II with a Heliar? No one has used one here, or is it known to be unsharp?

 

[bunip]

Ten years ago begun collecting folders seeking the sharpest one. Now I have more than hundred and discovered that there is more difference in sharpness between each sample of the same camera than between different cameras. I noticed this between 10 agfa isolette with the solinar 75 lens, between 4 Voigtlander bessa with the colos skopar 105, between 5 agfa record III with the solinar 105 4,5 and so on with the zeiss ikontas with tessars 105 and 75. After all I have some "better" samples: one Agfa Super Isolette (probably the best in ergonomy), 3-4 agfa isolette III (same lens as super isolette), few voigtlander perkeo and bessa, and some zeiss ikontas with the tessars. But in last years I left folders for a sharper camera level and now I enjoy my rolleiflexes, the hasselblad, the mamyja six and M Press. In my wet printing I noticed the difference in sharpness between 6 elements lenses and tessars. Another story about the lens character you can find for ex. in an old heliar...

 

[bunip]

Yes, I have one with an early series heliar (the one with much distortion) but it's a difficoult lens to appreciate in general photography. Good for some kind of portraits. I don't like portraits in 6x9. I love it as it's a piece of jewelry

 

[bunip]

the best compromise in weight, sharpness, cost and dimensions for me is the Agfa Isolette III with the Solinar lens. Indistinguishable from tessar 75mm or color skopar 75 and 80mm, but lighter, smaller and sturdier.

 

[hsandler]

I have had many folders now, and I also happen to have an Autocord with a superb lens for comparison. I will assume you want a folder that takes 120 film, so you don't have to respool or machine out the film chamber. That rules out most Kodaks, although I had a lowly Tourist with Anaston f6.3 lens that performed well. If you want a coated lens, that generally rules out anything pre-war. Amongst the many European 1950s folders, I have had bad luck with all the Agfa Isolettes I tried. The bellows are fragile and they all have the dreaded "green grease" problem that seizes up the focus. If you go that route and are not good at camera repairs, you definitely want to get a reconditioned one. I went through three learning that lesson. I currently have a Moskva-5 with coupled rangefinder, but it took a lot of work to get the lens parallel to the film plane, and that is partly due to a weak point in the design itself. I have always had good luck with post-war Zeiss folders. The build quality is great. Many models take 32mm push-on filters and hoods, which will be nice if you acquire more than one. The only Zeiss lens I didn't like was on a pre-war Nettar. (The lens was labelled Nettar anastigmat, not Novar and I think may be a grade down in quality). It vignetted noticeably and was terrible in the corners, even stopped down. The best Zeiss folder I had was a Super Ikonta IV, but it's also one of the most expensive, and in moving away from the simple red window to an auto-stop mechanism, they made the frame spacing specific to a certain film thickness which is problematic. If a coupled rangefinder is not a must, you would probably like and could afford almost any of the Ikontas or Nettars, such as the 517 or 518, either 6x6 or 6x9 or a late-production Ikonta 521 for 6x4.5. I recently acquired this Ikonta 521which is smaller than many 35mm cameras and is a lot of fun to carry in a pocket. Without a rangefinder you will want to stop down anyway, so the 3-element Novar lenses are still pretty good near the edges and razor sharp in the middle.

Zeiss Ikonta A 521 by Howard Sandler, on Flickr

 

[bunip]

Yes hsandler what you say is right, but I consider each camera at its best, in working order and clad. If you hope to find one off the market ready to use I'd go with Voigtlander first, Zeiss second (based on my buying experience on ebay). Any Agfa has to be cleaned from old grease and needs a new bellows.

 

[bunip]

WOW, I have that same camera but with the tessar lens. It's really small

 

[DWThomas]

No mention of the Bessa II with a Heliar? No one has used one here, or is it known to be unsharp?

Hehe, supposedly the one to get has the APO-Lanthar (there's a mint one on ePrey right now), but even the lesser models were generally priced way beyond what I would pay for a user to take on hikes, etc. Note that the Bessa collector attraction has the 37mm lens hoods being offered at the $100 dollar level!

I have a Perkeo II with Color Skopar and an Ercona II with the Zeiss Jena Tessar. Both do a quite decent job. I suspect, as mentioned upthread, sample to sample variations could be significant, partly due to manufacturing tolerances and partly due to age. (At the camera links to my PBase galleries there are sample shots, as well as links to other sub-galleries with "real world" examples. Most of the samples are scanned with an Epson 3200(!) flatbed and intentionally not posted at full resolution.)

 

[darkosaric]

Isolette is pretty sharp:

 

[Dan Daniel]

Oh, I do have a Super Fujica-6 folder. 6x6 with a 75mm Fujinar lens. Gotten shots comparable to any Tessar or Autocord Rokkor. Has a sturdy strut mechanism for lens board. Unit focusing helical, not front element focusing. Decent viewfinder, coupled rangefinder. Recommended.

 

[takilmaboxer]

The optimal focal distance for front cell focusing is set to 40x focal length.
I have always wondered about this. Where did you get this information? I'd like to dig it up myself! My folders do fine at 3 meters (10 feet); the problem is that the focusing ring may not be accurate. I have one folder that I have tested exhaustively and 3 meters, accurately focused, is at 4 meters on the ring, despite infinity being accurate. Negatives are nice and sharp at 3 meters!
As far as mechanical rigidity, I've only had problems with this in the 6X9 folders, and never with the Zeiss construction. The long focal length (105mm) creates more problems, with its narrow DOF. Wear and tear are the biggest problem with the mechanics.
Glad to know there are so many folder fans out there!

 

[Wayne]

That 55mm is incredible, but they're selling from $2-3K. But it's an excellent lens on a solid camera for sure.



Congrats! I'd enjoy trying one of those.

Tons of them on that auction site, but beware of condition. I looked for weeks before I finally got what appears to be a good one (after I got the fungus off), although I haven't finished my first roll yet. I wanted the dual format version so I had fewer to choose from than if you're OK with only 6x6.

 

[cramej]

There are lots of good examples in this thread: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...as-6x6-6x7-and-6x9.160053/page-6#post-2121179

A couple of my images from a Certo Super Sport Dolly with the Trioplan lens. Some of the triplets are quite good. Zeiss Novar, Meyer Optik Trioplan, etc.

 

[Auer]

Voigtländer Bessa 46 | Skopar ƒ/3.5/75 | Kodak Tri-X 400 | Kodak D76 1:1

 

[pbromaghin]

Zone focussing is liberating.
Also, if size matters there are some non RF folders out there that very comfortably will fit in the front pocket of a pair of Levi's.

And if you have a depth of field scale on the lens, zone focusing is a breeze. I find that the 6x6 Zeiss 523 Novar zone focuser is quicker and easier to shoot than the rangefinder SuperIkonta 531 6x4.5.
The improved Novar (from around 1952) on the 523 largely eliminates the vignetting and corner softness.

 

[grat]

I'll go out on a limb and suggest "newer is sharper"-- largely because of optics and coating. My Bessa I (Vaskar) is fine in the center, and progressively rougher towards the edges, largely because of chromatic aberration, so a filter would probably help considerably. Voigtlander actually recommends shooting with a yellow filter by default for B&W photography.

 

[Alex Varas]

No mention of the Bessa II with a Heliar? No one has used one here, or is it known to be unsharp?

I have shot with early Bessa Rf and Heliar, very sharp from f/5.6. This lens will never let me down no matter what camera wears it.