Voigtlander

I had never heard of this camera, but was impressed by its finish and heft. Martha assured me that the Skopar lens was a winner, and loaded the camera for me with Kodachrome 64. I borrowed a tripod from another friend, and set up that afternoon to catch the blue time of day. I opened my window to eliminate reflections, and steeled myself to the December wind ripping in off the Hudson. I set it for infinity--there was no rangefinder--and then I made a series of exposures with no more to guide me than suggestions from the tripod’s owner. I still recall pushing my frozen fingers down onto the release button and the clockwork sounds of the shutter.

When I got the slides back from the lab, I held them up to a light until I found the one slide that was perfectly exposed to capture the colors of the sky and river. When the winning slide was transformed to a Cibachrome print, I had a sharp, high-resolution image worthy of display. It hangs on my wall yet, the colors of the great river captured and unchanged for almost thirty years. It is, alas, the only river view of my current apartment.

That’s when I learned to associate the Voigtlander name with quality, and that’s the other reason why I was susceptible to that Prominent in the window.

It was offered at $85, what the Argus would have cost my parents in 1953. I paid quickly and took the Prominent home. It opened the door to the golden world of Voigtlander and the wider world of vintage cameras.

The Prominent

I had heard that the Prominent was the best of the Voigtlander line; and given the excellence of the Vito, that meant a really high-spec camera. When I hung the camera around my neck, I felt like somebody's rich uncle; I expected my first roll of film to be remarkable.

I didn’t need an instruction book for this machine. Opening and loading was obvious and simple. The challenge for me was focusing. I had never used a rangefinder, plus the Prominent has an oddball arrangement. To focus, you twist a knob on the top at the left—where you usually find a camera’s rewind mechanism. As you twist, the lens moves back and forth like a lens on a lens board. That’s one reason the normal lenses for this camera are so good and so tough: they have no moving elements. (The 35mm and 100mm lenses for the Prominent have moving rear elements; but they are heavily protected by the lens barrel and steel mounting prongs.) The rangefinder patch is within the camera’s viewing window, which is small. Voigtlander recognized this, and provided several viewing aids, the most interesting of which is the Kontur finder. With this device, you keep both eyes open and put the finder in front of one eye. The result is a life-size view with frame lines floating over it. An optical illusion that works well.

The Prominent is heavy for its modest size, and I like that. I can hold a dense camera steady. There are limits, of course: the Pentax 67 is so heavy that I can’t manage it.

My first roll of film went through the Prominent at the 1979 New York Book Fair, held on Fifth Avenue. I set out up the Avenue, booming through the film, enjoying the camera’s solid feel and smooth mechanism. I felt like Cartier-Bresson. Then a kind stranger pointed out that I still had the lens cap on. Another lesson about rangefinders.

Now, I must confess that, while waiting for the Book Fair, I had picked up a couple of lenses for the Prominent. I found a Skoparon 35mm lens with a dented f-stop ring and fungus on the back element. And a Dynaron 100mm with its own rich crop of fungus and something loose inside. Anyone with a minimum knowledge of lenses would have walked away, but I---I was nervous that some collector would pounce on these treasures if I didn’t grab them. The salesmen in the camera stores did not discourage this view. I paid through the nose and took these mossy messes to a Mr. Alan Park, who had a repair shop within sight of Madison Square Garden. His photographic heyday was the 1950s, so he could repair Voigtlander equipment with one hand tied behind his back, as he put it. One hand or no, he got out the fungi and corrected the other problems. When he handed the lenses back to me, he said, “This is great stuff, you know.” He was right, as I found out on Fifth Avenue.

Anyway, when I was making my shots of the book booths, I had a choice of lenses. I'm standoffish, so I mostly used the 100mm Dynaron. However, when the shots came back from the lab, the best of them had come from the Skoparon. The pictures from all the optics looked sharp and warm, but those from the Skoparon were ten percent above the pack.

The good shots inspired me, and soon I had two other normal lenses—an Ultron and a Skopar. And then I had to have a chrome lens hood and a Turnit finder. This last is a viewing device that mounts in the accessory shoe and rotates to give you the view for either 35mm or 100mm. It has parallax compensation and a nice leather-and-chrome exterior. I use this same finder on my Leica M3 when I’m shooting with a 35mm lens. Mechanically and cosmetically, it fits perfectly aboard a Leica.

The Prominent has served me flawlessly all these years. It was only in the shop once: after my toddler son hurled it onto a concrete floor. This shock disengaged the focusing mechanism, but the Skoparon—which was on the camera at the time—showed no damage. Like the other Prominent lenses, it is made of thick glass and heavy metal.

These lenses, despite their time of manufacture, do their best work in color. They deliver color images equal to the best optics of their time, including those from Leica and Zeiss. With black and white film, they deliver the goods; they even deliver shots with unique qualities. But the results, to my eye, are a pace behind the Leicas. Not in resolution or sharpness, but in the management of aberrations. The Leica designers found a use of aberrations that--in monochrome--I find supreme. However, this is a matter of taste; and there are people who prefer the Voigtlander look to any other. I’ll just say this: don’t judge the lenses for the Prominent until you see what they do with color. And this, also: don't pay too much for them, and don't buy banged-up or fungus-ridden examples: they are not that rare. There's a camera store in New York that has been advertising a Skoparon for years--at $250. It's no wonder they don't sell it: the usual price is around a hundred dollars. It's a great lens, but you can get it without paying for some camera salesman's world tour.

I've always found the Prominent frustrating for street work. I see the shots, but lose them as I struggle to focus and frame. The viewfinder gives you far less than a life-size image, and is damn dim. And there's another quirk. The focusing knob is positioned precisely so that, as you twist away at focusing, your small fingers cast a shadow on the little round window that lights the rangefinder patch. Result: while you are trying to find something--anything--you can focus on and wondering where the devil the rangefinder patch went to, your subject slips away. This is the Achilles heel of an otherwise stupendous system. I am told that the Prominent II solves this problem with a big, bright finder; but I have never handled one of them. They are rare. With my Prominent I, perhaps I could mount the 35mm Skoparon, stop down a bit, and rely on zone focus; but that isn't my style. I like candid shots to be reasonably sharp. If you aren't so picky, you might like the Prominent for street shooting. Its shutter isn't quiet, but it doesn't make a typical camera noise and therefore is ignored. However, be warned: if you carry this machine, you will not be ignored. With a Turnit on top and that gorgeous chrome hood mounted on a lens, the Prominent is one of the most elegant cameras ever made: as impressive and sleek as a 1930s Packard. It draws admiring glances and starts conversations. A common remark is, “Now that is a camera.”

Well, that it is; and a distinguished portfolio could be built with it.