Fabulous folders

In less than a decade, Cosina has launched several classicly styled 35mm film products, doing stuff some would argue, Leica should have done long ago. There is more mileage yet in the format but it would not surprise me to see something distinctly more retro coming from this corner. My experiences with the Super Baldax ( see ajax post 2.5.06) set me thinking it would not be difficult to modify the basic concept and fit a modern rangefinder viewing system with an integral ttl meter. It would not be the first time in recent years this has been done but I think Mr Kobayashi could probably do it better. I suspect however, that if this idea is on his agenda at all, it will not be the Super Baldax at which he is looking for inspiration but a Zeiss Super Ikonta IV. Pity, the Baldax is more compact.





We are not about to revisit the era of 300 Leica copies but there are plenty of people out there who still get a fix on film (see the Rollei 35RF illustrations and lens analyses detail). Whether or not the figures are to be believed, market saturation levels for electronic devices are rapidly approaching in the eyes of some analyists, which means, quite simply, film will be available for a long while to come. Smaller companies like Cosina will find room for growth in niche areas with appealing products; a few thousand here, a few thousand there. Why would they stop at 35mm?







At the Zavod Arsenal in Kiev, copies of the Exakta 66 are still being knocked out for the home market alongside tank sights and other vision accessories. The 35mm Kiev Contax copy is, so far as I can tell, no longer manufactured, but I imagine the Arsenal still has all the presses and tools necessary to restart a small run. If I owned Cosina, I just might want to investigate the possibility of buying all that kit.



These asides aside, pevious mention on this site of the Super Baldax (see Ajax post 2.5.06) seems to have sparked interest in locations as far apart as The Welsh Hills and Paris. And it seems that Paris may currently be a hot spot for obtaining these fabulous old folding bed cameras in prime condition at reasonable cost. A close friend recently purchased a 'new' ( he says) Agfa Record II off the shelf of a St.Germain dealer for less than the cost of a discounted ten-pack brick of B+W film. Not content with his luck however, he has since added a Zeiss Ikonta B with 105mm Novar f/4.5 and a folding Kodak Retina with Xenar 50mm f/3.5. The quality of colour prints I have seen made from the latter on modern Agfa in-store print machines, exceeds by a wide margin anything capable of being produced on digital media, even if they are the result of a film frame grab, coverted to digital and then output in analogue form.



Researching the subject in more depth, I found there were any number of 1940s - 50s folders (as distinct from strut types which have no solid plate bed.) for the 6X6cm format offered by a raft of manufacturers, the majority aimed at consumers of that era and with fairly low level specifications. It seems the demand for fast coated lenses (f/3.5 or greater) and a good shutter speed range (to 1/500th second) with coupled rangefinders and semi automated film winding was limited; only a handful of brands of which Balda was one, met more sophisticated requirements.

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