Tag: Voigtländer Bessa

  • Updated review: Voigtländer Bessa

    I’ve updated my review of the folding Voigtländer Bessa, a camera for 120 film.

  • An evening in the front yard with a 70-year-old camera

    My circa 1940 Voigtländer Bessa, a medium-format folding camera, sits on prominent display in my office. It’s been in that spot the entire six years or so I’ve owned it, making it one of my earliest old-camera purchases. It came to me with a hazy lens that I have been meaning to try to clean up. This…

  • Voigtländer Bessa

    Consensus is that the Germans made the finest lenses and wrapped them in well-designed, nearly indestructible bodies. Collectors fawn over their Zeiss-Ikons, Rolleis, and Leicas. But the granddaddy of all German cameras — and the oldest name in photography — is Voigtländer, which made its first optical instruments in 1756. When I saw the very…