Karl-Heinz Lange

Bessy ak image by Andrew Schmadel (Image rights)

Lange redesigned this Nimslo 3D Stereo camera, making it lighter and cheaper image by Steve Harwood (Image rights)

camera, door closed, flash coupled, the Balda CA 35, better known as Vito C image by Uwe Kulick (Image rights)

Karl-Heinz Lange (born 1932 in Güstrow) was a German camera designer. From 1950 to 1952 he took an apprenticeship at Balda in Bünde, and developed the rangefinder of the Super-Baldinette. Then the leading developer of Balda took him into his development department. He left Balda after troubles with the free-lancing constructor Danzer. Then Lange went to Montanus Kamerabau in Solingen. He kept contacts with Balda and made further developments for them in his free time. He built prototypes of the Baldessa cameras at home. After one month in Solingen Balda engaged him again - as chief constructor. Back in Bünde he light-tightened Danzer's Super Baldina and constructed several exciting camera models:

• Baldessa Ib (coupled rangefinder with parallax correction)
• Super Baldamatic (first automatic shutter priority camera with Compur shutter)
• Voigtländer Bessy k/ak/as/s (Kodapak)
• Voigtländer Vito C (Minox 35 concurrence)
• Nizo 1000
• Minox 110 S (pocket camera)
• Nimslo 3D (cheap late version)
• Argus Carefree 164 (Kodapak)

Links

• About Karl-Heinz Lange on Ulrich Vogt's page (Vogt is one of the authors of the book about Heinz Waaske)

Baldessa 1B image by SteveMPhoto (Image rights)