Icarex 35 S TM and Ultron 1.8/50
The Ultron of the concave front element fame.
The Icarex is a very conventional camera. Nothing to report there. The Ultron is special, though. It is seriously sharp, with good colour rendering. However, the bokeh does not strike me to be as creamy and smooth as that of other lenses.
The Icarex 35 S was Zeiss Ikon's last fling attempt at withstanding the onslaught of Japanese camera makers and keeping the company afloat. Alas, it was too little, too late. The Japanese competitors offered better, more advanced products and a more attractive lens line-up.
Now, if they had offered TTL metering, a focal plane shutter and a range of good lenses for the consumer and prosumer market 10 years earlier instead of promoting that white elephant Contarex and the obsolete and unattractive Contaflex, it might have been a different matter, but that is not what happened.
Zeiss Ikon went under offering a confuse and mutually incompatible jumble of camera ranges using five different bayonet types. There is no way such a badly run company could have survived, and no reason why it should have.
Shot with:
Rolleiflex SL66 ("The 666")
Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm 1:2.8
Type 120 roll film, Kodak Portra 800 professional grade colour negative film, expired 09/2019, exposed at ISO 400
Developed and scanned by www.meinfilmlab.de
Icarex 35 S TM and Ultron 1.8/50
The Ultron of the concave front element fame.
The Icarex is a very conventional camera. Nothing to report there. The Ultron is special, though. It is seriously sharp, with good colour rendering. However, the bokeh does not strike me to be as creamy and smooth as that of other lenses.
The Icarex 35 S was Zeiss Ikon's last fling attempt at withstanding the onslaught of Japanese camera makers and keeping the company afloat. Alas, it was too little, too late. The Japanese competitors offered better, more advanced products and a more attractive lens line-up.
Now, if they had offered TTL metering, a focal plane shutter and a range of good lenses for the consumer and prosumer market 10 years earlier instead of promoting that white elephant Contarex and the obsolete and unattractive Contaflex, it might have been a different matter, but that is not what happened.
Zeiss Ikon went under offering a confuse and mutually incompatible jumble of camera ranges using five different bayonet types. There is no way such a badly run company could have survived, and no reason why it should have.
Shot with:
Rolleiflex SL66 ("The 666")
Carl Zeiss Planar 80mm 1:2.8
Type 120 roll film, Kodak Portra 800 professional grade colour negative film, expired 09/2019, exposed at ISO 400
Developed and scanned by www.meinfilmlab.de