Vitessa

The Vitessa was an innovative 35mm folding rangefinder camera made by Voigtländer in the 1950s. The folding bed was replaced by a barn-door assembly, the focusing was operated by the user's right thumb via a wheel on the back of the top plate, and the film advance and shutter cocking were operated with a large plunger rod pointing out of the top plate, that could be retracted when the camera was folded.

It suffered a number of small variations during its production. The very first models did not have strap lugs nor automatic parallax correction. The most expensive models had a 50mm f/2 Ultron, the others a 50mm f/3.5 or f/2.8 Color-Skopar. They all had a Compur-Rapid or Synchro Compur shutter to 1/500. The later models had an uncoupled selenium meter.

The folding Vitessa was replaced by the rigid Vitessa T, a camera based on the same body but without the barn-door and with interchangeable lenses.

At the end of the 1960s, Zeiss Ikon / Voigtländer produced a series of compact 35mm cameras called the Vitessa 500, and some 126 film cameras called the Vitessa 126, that are both discussed elsewhere.

Links

• The Vitessa at Corsopolaris, by Massimo Bertacchi
• General site about Voigtländer, by Dietrich Drescher, with good pages about the Vitessa
• A page about the Vitessa, with many info, in Japanese
• The Vitessa at Peter Lausch site
• Vitessa cameras at www.collection-appareils.com

Repairs

• Voigtlander Vitessa N. Circa 1954 - Adjusting Rangefinder
• Shutter/wind problems repair