{"id":33917,"date":"2026-04-17T01:03:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/?p=33917"},"modified":"2026-04-12T22:35:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T02:35:03","slug":"making-it-better-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/making-it-better-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"making it better … sort of …"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

a 1927 ad for the ICA line of cameras<\/p><\/div>\n

Toronto<\/strong>. The late Larry Gubas, once president of the Zeiss Historical Society, editor of its journal (Zeiss Historica), and author of a number of Zeiss historical books (including the massive Zeiss and Photography, perhaps his best publication) wrote an interesting article in issue 27-2 of our journal titled, “Pre- Zeiss Ikon Camera Design”.<\/p>\n

The article describes the efforts by those companies to improved their products to compete in the struggling post-war German camera industry. Sadly, as Larry explained, they misunderstood what was truly needed in those pivotal years.<\/p>\n

Larry begins his story, “In the difficult business years of the\u00a0<\/i>1920s, before the Leica and Contax, the new\u00a0<\/i>fashion of cameras were all outgrowths of old\u00a0<\/i>designs but included improved materials\u00a0<\/i>\u2013wood giving way to more expensive light-<\/i>weight metals, and faster lenses being\u00a0<\/i>applied.<\/i><\/p>\n

“In this context predecessor companies of\u00a0<\/i>Zeiss Ikon were innovative and hoping to be\u00a0<\/i>competitive. But their ideas for better\u00a0<\/i>design were not necessarily along the lines\u00a0<\/i>of ‘smaller and lighter’ but rather to incorpo<\/i>rate a better strut or camera-body support\u00a0<\/i>system, a new viewfinder or a better focus<\/i>ing scale, (maybe in ivory). <\/i><\/p>\n

“True, there was\u00a0<\/i>a bit of a rush towards focal-plane cameras,\u00a0<\/i>but the majority of these could not be called ‘<\/i>candid cameras.’<\/i><\/p>\n

“This article is intended to give a sam<\/i>pling of some of the new ‘wonders’ pro<\/i>duced by these predecessor companies and <\/i>a competitor at the moment of financial dis<\/i>aster when Zeiss money and business acu<\/i>men came to the table to rescue the\u00a0<\/i>German photographic industry.<\/i><\/p>\n

“As the above [at left in this post] advertisement shows (figure 1) Ica was, for\u00a0the most part, a company making various cameras of the same\u00a0sort. This February 1927 advertisement shows a great number\u00a0of similar cameras with little to set one apart from the other\u00a0except size and materials.<\/p>\n

“The most modern of the bunch shown is the very snappy personal Kinamo movie camera from Emmanuel Goldberg\u2019s design. However, even this marvellous\u00a0camera was a real handful. Notice that Carl Zeiss Inc. of New\u00a0York is still selling Ica cameras, but with no real mention of\u00a0Zeiss Ikon which had come into existence some months before.<\/p>\n

“Ernemann was a stand-alone organization that manufactured every part of its product itself. It had Ludwig Bertele in\u00a0its lens-design department making (for 1924) an incredible\u00a0speed lens that made the Ermanox camera an outstanding value\u00a0for its day. The camera changed over the years from 1924 to\u00a01930, when its manufacture ceased. There were at least three\u00a0different film formats and two basic styles.<\/p>\n

“The new lens was\u00a0nearly as big as, and heavier than, the\u00a0camera. One version had a bellows and\u00a0locking struts (figure 2 in the journal), while another\u00a0had a totally metal body with the lens\u00a0built into the body of the camera (figure\u00a03 in the journal).<\/p>\n

“There must have been a lot of storage space in those years for, in the 1939\u00a0Willoughbys ad, it was still being sold\u00a0as new <\/b>a whole nine years after manufacturing had ended. This, like many\u00a0cameras of the early days of Zeiss Ikon,\u00a0was marked with both the Ernemann\u00a0and Zeiss Ikon trademarks.” …<\/p>\n

Members read all of Larry’s insightful illustrated article in the issue 27-2 pdf file on the free members-only DVD\/memory stick. See ‘Membership’ above and at right to open\/renew membership. Email any questions to member@phsc.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our 2026 events are beginning to arrive with the next two (May 3rd Auction and May 24th Fair) confirmed for next month. A poster and details will be pinned at the top of this site as we get closer to the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto. The late Larry Gubas, once president of the Zeiss Historical Society, editor of its journal (Zeiss Historica), and author of a number of Zeiss historical books (including the massive Zeiss and Photography, perhaps his best publication) wrote an interesting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1944],"tags":[500,34,286,105,14,30,279,348],"class_list":["post-33917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-accessories","tag-cameras","tag-darkroom","tag-digital","tag-film","tag-images","tag-lenses","tag-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33920,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33917\/revisions\/33920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phsc.ca\/camera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}