The third of the name...

It seems logical, when discussing the Prominent, to mention its cousin Vito III.  That's not an obscure Italian monarch; it's a camera contemporary with the Prominent and built on the same shell.

It isn't easy to find.  Voigtlander didn’t make many, and the owners don’t turn them loose.  The III has one real oddity:  there are no lugs, so it's no case, no strap.  Fortunately, the ERC for the Prominent fits this camera, and those cases are not rare. 

 

The front of the Vito III differs from the Prominent; the lens is on bellows, and not interchangeable.  The focusing knob works more easily than the Prominent’s, and the viewfinder is a notch brighter.  It is compact and lightweight.  The Ultron 2.0 lens is excellent, and the shutter tolerates long periods of neglect.  I know that, because I seldom shoot with this machine.

 

Those are the good features.  We'll get to the other stuff presently.     

 

I first saw one of these in the window of a camera store on Lexington Avenue, near what is now Citicorp Center.  I kept vowing to go in and buy the beautiful little thing, but—one day—the camera was gone.  Sold to a non-procrastinator.  Two more years passed before I saw another one at another place, and this time I pounced.  I was wiser to the prices of vintage equipment by then, and came away with most of my skin still on me.  Since then, I have never seen a III in a camera store or a camera show or anywhere at all. 

 

Should you hunt down your own Vito III?  Probably not.  It seems like a great everyday camera, but it has no meter and you have to pull off the lens hood when you fold it up.  Plus, the shutter and aperture settings are fiddly and hard to read.  And you have to drill a hole in the bottom of a Prominent case so you can get at the button that opens the beast for use.  I tell you:  when you reach for the Vito III, you see your hand waver, then go to another camera.  It is a collector's item, not a shooter's.