Picked up a nice Ikoflex IIa with Zeiss Opton Tessar 3.5/75mm in my
neighbourhood. 60 Euros with original ER case and manual. First, it looked
like the shutter release did not work. Then I figured out that the closed
waistlevel finder blocks the shutter relase. But the relase still didn’t work,
when I oopened the WLF.
After carefully reading the German manual, I learned that after loading the
film and advancing it to frame “1”, using the old-fashioned little red window
with the sliding door on the camera bottom, you engage the shutter and film
counter mechanism by pressing and turning a button on the right side of the
camera counterclockwise until it clicks and the 1 appears in the frame counter
window. Then the shutter is enagaged and you get 12 shots properly counted and
advanced as in the Rolleiflex.
So, I load a roll of Kodax Tri-X, start winding and watching the film back
slide by through the red window. No “1” appears, but after a while one single
arrow (“->”)appears. I keep winding but nothing more appears and I soon have
the wole roll cranked through the camera... ;-) Tried to rescue the film in
the dark bathroom by winding it back on its original spool, but couldn’t get
the very curly paper backing and film aligned again and gave up.
A nice new roll of Tri X is now my “test roll" for similar situations. I
figured out that the arrow was indeed where I had to stop. There are numbers
too on that track but they are printed extremely faintly on the Kodak backing
paper and they don’t seem to be the ones in the proper 6x6 spacing. Has anyone
else run into this?
Looking forward to actually shooting the Ikoflex IIa. I also ordered an
"Ikoflex Favorit" with a Carl Zeiss 3.5/75mm Tessar and selenium meter - the
last of the Zeiss TLR breed (until 1960) -, which has not arrived yet. It has
has a different shutter engaging system and no more red window. Will then keep
the one that is easiset to use and with the best lens quality.
Don’t understand why Zeiss did not put their own 2.8 Planar or even Sonnar
lenses in their TLR series, while at the same time they provided super-sharp
Planars to Rollei in Braunschweig. Apparently, they never intended the Ikoflex
TLRs for professional use and more a a competitor to the Rolleicords. The last
Ikoflex with a 2.8/80mm Tessar was the prewar Ikoflex III, which was also the
only one with the peculiar Albada finder and with a winding crank. All other
Ikoflexes just have winding knobs…
The Ikoflex IIa is quite compact and appears rather heavy, very well built, and
with narrow manufacturing tolerances. The shutter speeds from 1/1 - 1/500 seem
right on. Curiously you can only get to the 1/500 second shutter speed before
you wind the shutter...
Jan
