Voigtlander started as a
scientific instrument maker in Vienna in 1756. The
founder, Johann Christoph Voigtlander, made compasses and
quadrants and associated equipment; it was his son,
Johann Freidrich, who started the manufacture of optical
glass instruments like spectacle lenses and opera
glasses, and it was the founder's grandson who
collaborated with a mathemetician, Petzval, to design a
lens in 1840. This is the world's first lens designed
mathematically and it has a maximum aperture of f/3.7. To
use the lens, Voigtlander produced the world's first
all-metal camera which was also the first camera to have
rack-and-pinion focusing.
Voigtlander moved to Braunschweig in
1849, where it remained for over a century.
Zeiss-Ikon took control of Voigtlander
in the 1960s and sold Voigtlander to Rollei in the early
1970s. Since then the Voigtlander name has changed hands
but it is still alive.
For many collectors, the heyday of
Voigtlander came in the 1950s and 1960s when it produced
a range of interesting cameras, including the Bessamatic,
Prominent, Dynamatic and Ultramatic. However, these were
all quite expensive cameras.
I like the Vito cameras as they were
cameras for the mass market. They were not cheap but they
were good, medium priced cameras which brought the best
of German camera manufacture to a larger
market.
Designed to be easy to use, they are
in many cases, still very usable today. Most of them are
easy to find and will not cost large amounts of money so
an impressive and good-looking collection can be
assembled relatively easily. Voigtlander made some
accessories for the Vito range although the camera was
never a system camera unlike, for example, the Kodak
Retina.
The story starts with the
folding
Vito, first introduced in
about 1939 with production finally ending in about
1955.
Rigid-fronted
Vitos, like the very popular
Vito B, started in about 1954 and continued until the end
of Voigtlander in 1971.
The Vitomatics
were introduced in about 1958, and all have a built-in
exposure meter.
The Vito
Automatic cameras were
introduced in about 1962 and were withdrawn only a few
years later.
The Vitoret
cameras were made from about 1962 until 1971; these were
designed to be an inexpensive and easy to use camera
aimed at photographers for whom the Vito cameras were too
expensive.
The Vitrona
was made in about 1964 and it is remarkable for having a
built-in electronic flash. It is one of a
kind.
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