{"id":1992,"date":"2008-11-24T09:05:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T14:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=1992"},"modified":"2008-11-24T09:05:38","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T14:05:38","slug":"the-voigtlander-has-landed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=1992","title":{"rendered":"The Voigtl\u00e4nder Has Landed."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Voigtl\u00e4nder<\/a><\/p>\n

Started in 1756 as an optics manufacturer, the German company Voigtl\u00e4nder<\/a> didn’t even make its first metal camera until nearly a huindred years later, in 1849. Their devices quickly acquired a global reputation for astoundingly sharp images, though, courtesy of the firm’s revolutionary Petzval lenses<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the decades, Voigtl\u00e4nder created a number of technically innovative products, like their 1965 Vitrona<\/a>, the first 35mm compact camera with a built-in electronic flash. The post-World War II mega-dominance of the photography biz by Japanese camera manufacturers, however, ultimately led to their demise and to Cosina’s 1999 acquisition of the Voigtl\u00e4nder name<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Voigtl\u00e4nder<\/a><\/p>\n

In the nearly ten years since, though, Cosina’s produced several solid-body, Leica screw mount film cameras<\/a> under Voigtl\u00e4nder’s famed marque. Now, it looks like they’re truly feeling their royal oats, having recently announced the upcoming 2009 release of the Voigtl\u00e4nder Bessa III<\/a>, above and right.<\/p>\n

\"Bessaman\"<\/a>A 120\/220 folding rangefinder that alternates as you wish between 6×6 cm and 6×7 cm formats, it revives the legendary Bessa name, unused on a rangefinder since the Voigtl\u00e4nder Bessa I, right, and II<\/a> in the 1950s, a half-century ago. Though they share the large negative, the new camera ups the ante with jollies the old camera couldn’t have forseen, like automatic parallax compensation, aperture-priority automatic exposure, and integral LED metering.<\/p>\n

If you’re like most people, however, in 2008, the notion of spending what will probably be at least a couple of thousand dollars (no price has been announced yet) on a camera\u2014with a bellows!\u2014that shoots film<\/em>, not to mention an odd kind of film the drug stores don’t even process, probably strikes you as a bit precious. To which I say, that just leaves more for the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Started in 1756 as an optics manufacturer, the German company Voigtl\u00e4nder didn’t even make its first metal camera until nearly a huindred years later, in 1849. Their devices quickly acquired a global reputation for astoundingly sharp images, though, courtesy of the firm’s revolutionary Petzval lenses. Over the decades, Voigtl\u00e4nder created a number of technically innovative […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[64,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}