A 1930s folder

This was the top of the line for 6x9 cameras. The best of the best for that period. That period in time was the mid-1930s. It was a period of great change in the photographic industry. The roll film had arrived, pushing aside plate film, which continued to enjoy some popularity.

The Leica -- and its "miniature" 35mm format -- was gaining acceptance in the marketplace, and Kodak had responded with its daylight-loading 35mm film cassette and the Retina from its Nagel Works plant in Stuttgart. Nearby, Zeiss Ikon brought to the market its boxy Contax and then followed several years later with the much-improved Contax II.

In 1934, Zeiss Ikon released three Super Ikonta cameras for the 120 format. There was the Super Ikonta A, which gave 16 6cm x 4.5cm shots per roll. That was accompanied by the Super Ikonta B and its 6x6 format. The camera featured an auto framing mechanism that banished the need to precisely wind the film so that the frame number appeared in the little red window. This was accomplished with the loss of one frame, so the Super Ikonta B gave 11 shots, rather than 12.

Then there was the Super Ikonta C -- a large camera that tipped the scales at 28 ounces. This camera delivered just eight shots on 120. There's a lot of negative in 6x9. No need to use a loupe to try to figure out what you've photographed. It's right there in front of you, plain as the nose on your face. And if that wasn't big enough, Zeiss Ikon offered the Super Ikonta 530/15 model, which I believe used 116 film.

Like its other Super Ikonta siblings, the C uses rotating wedge prisms for its rangefinder system. The prisms for the A and C cameras are mounted on an arm that folds neatly against the shutter housing when it's time to put the camera away. The C becomes reasonably compact for such a large piece of precision machinery. Extended, the rotating wedge prism system is very effective and very accurate.

The prewar Super Ikontas featured the four-element Tessar or the three-element Triotar with the Tessar being the premium optic. The prewar A came with an f/3.5 7.5cm Tessar, and the B model always carried the f/2.8 8.0cm Tessar. My particular camera has the f/4.5 10.5cm Tessar, uncoated, of course. Other Super Ikontas can be found with the f/3.8 Tessar of the same focal length.

From what I can tell, this probably is the second 530/2 model. The first used a small plunger near the lens to trip the shutter. The earliest model also lacked a sliding cover for the red windows that display the frame number. The successor 531/2 -- introduced in 1936 -- featured a film advance and shutter release on the top of the camera, as well as double-exposure prevention. One Internet source has determined that this camera is among the last of the 530/2 models and probably was made in early 1936. The lens was part of a batch of Tessars produced in July 1935.