Excellent example of craftmanship from Zeiss, this camera. Purchased it in the summer of 2000, while travelling in Germany. The city of Heidelberg was a place pinned on my “must visit” map of German cities, mainly because its medieval architecture and of course, the famous university made it a very nice place to spend some days taking photographs. Nothing beats street and architectural photography with an old camera and, if at possible, a few rolls of XP2 film. Just the thing, in my amateur opinion.
A single range meter, so a later production reaching probably 1958, when productions stopped for this model. It works by matching the needle of the uncoupled meter to a value which you transfer to the dials around the lens. The meter is dead, this is how I got it, but operating the camera is a breeze, just set your aperture and shutter speed. If you have a separate meter, it’s ok, if not, Sunny 16 it.
Glass is a Novicar Anastigmat 2.8/45mm, in a Prontor SVS clockwork, with shutter speeds ranging from B to 1/300s. Very smooth dials too. Lens gives very good results with colour film, if you remember that a 200-400 film might be the suitable one for most instances. A yellow filter would not go amiss with this lens. Focusing is at distance manual, from 1 meter to infinity. Good dial grip on this setting.
Other than that, this camera resembles (uncannily so) to the Agfa Silette-L, showed here. Both an nice example of how the cameras were made and designed before the poxy plastics took over. Just my opinion, of course.