Zeiss Tele-Camera

left: Zeiss Tele-Camera, mid: shot with normal lens, right: shot with Tele-Camera scanned by Hans Kerensky  (Image rights)

The Zeiss Tele-Camera was a great achievement. Its body was a leather-covered case measuring 8×5×6 inches. The lens had to be drawn out of the body before use. The lens tube then had a length of 9 inches. In 1908 the The British Journal Photographic Almanac applauded the "triumph" of 17 inches from lens opening to focal plane, delivering an extraordinary focal length of 32 inches (800mm) ! It must have been extremely much focal length for a hand camera of 20th century's first decade, and a giant step towards modern telephoto lenses by lens maker Zeiss. The camera allowed ground glass focusing but also had a 4× magnifying binocular field glass mounted on top as tele viewfinder (the images show it with monocular!), and it had a Carl Zeiss Palmos focal-plane shutter. The f10 lens had an iris diaphragm and was focusable from 5 yards to infinity. The sensational camera appeared well-balanced when mounted on a tripod, and its weight was also well distributed when used as hand camera. It did cost only £40 in 1908.

illustration of how to use the heavy long focus hand camera in the June 1910 edition of the Dutch photography magazine "Lux" scanned by Hans Kerensky  (Image rights)

Source: The British Journal Photographic Almanac 1908