Another 35mm Folding Camera: The Zeiss Ikon Contessa (533/24)

Another 35mm Folding Camera: The Zeiss Ikon Contessa (533/24)

I'll come out and say it: I didn't need this camera. It was just an impulse buy from the Kamerastore website. But I like Zeiss Ikon cameras, and this one was 35mm, and a folder (it doesn't look like it, but it has little bellows inside), and I just had to have it. I HAD to. Of course, it was cheap, about 40€, which I understand is a great price for a Contessa. Naturally, it was in the 'Not Passed' category of the Kamerastore website, with 'flaws that will affect typical use'. In this case, the 'shutter overexposes and needs service. The rangefinder calibration is off. The light meter does not work, [and it] has a lot of dust, haze, and fungus inside the viewfinder'. The fungus had been killed by UV light, and I hoped (one day) I might get inside it to clean this out.

The Zeiss Ikon Contessa (533/24) is a manual 35mm rangefinder camera. Produced between 1950 and 1955, it was a quite high-end camera for the day, and it looks like it. Turning it over in your hands, the Contessa is a heavy beast (clocking in at around 600g), but has a minimalist appearance. All there is on the top plate of the camera is an indicator dial for the type of film, and the dial and window for the camera meter. On the bottom of the camera are two large wheels, one to advance the film and one to rewind, and a button in the centre of the advance wheel that disengages the wind-on mechanism to rewind the film. In the middle of the bottom of the camera is the frame counter. All of the other controls of the camera are hidden behind the lens flap.

Like many folding cameras from the Zeiss Ikon range, the Contessa has a flap on the front that pops out to reveal the lens. The shutter release button is also in this assembly, and this can be disconcerting when you're turning the folded camera around in your hands as there's no obvious shutter button on the top plate, where these things are normally found. It has a Compur-Rapid shutter, which makes it an early version of the Contessa, and from the serial number (O45505), I reckon it was made between 1956/57. The shutter has nominal speeds of 1s—1/500s (+ B), but according to the description the camera overexposes, so my first attempts at using this camera will probably be a bit of a guess. It comes with a Zeiss-Opton 45mm f2.8 Tessar lens, with apertures from f2.8 to f22. 

It has an uncoupled light meter, which is behind a flap on the front right of the camera, but of course that doesn't work in my Contessa. Outside in the daylight, the meter is used with the flap down. But indoors, and in low light situations, the flap can be raised to reveal the full selenium cell. I did come across a method of revitalising the selenium cell, and I may well give this a try later (https://elekm.net/zeiss-ikon/repair/meter-repair/). Similarly, the rangefinder is out of alignment and at some stage I might try working on that. The most serious fault with this Contessa is that the shutter speeds overexpose, but I have a 'plan' for that.

The interesting thing about this camera is that it'll only work with film loaded. There are two sprocket wheels below the film gate that lock on to the film sprockets and a hold the film firmly against the film plate. These turn for the required spacing between frames then lock the film in place. The wind on wheel only turns the sprocket wheels while the film is loaded, and the shutter cannot be cocked until the next frame is locked in place. It can actually be done with the back open and the wheels turned by hand, but it's fiddly.

To load the camera, open the film back and load a 35mm cassette. Pull a length of film to the wind on spindle, making sure that the film sprockets feed through the sprocket wheels. When the film is secure on the spool, close the back. On the bottom of the camera, rotate the film counter dial until the arrow is pointing at the diamond. Then wind on the film. It will automatically stop when the counter reaches '1' and the camera is ready to use. When the film is finished, and the wind on wheel can't turn any more, press the button in the centre of the wind on wheel and using the rewind wheel wind the film back into the cassette. The button disengages the wind-on mechanism and allows the film to be rewound. Keep pressure on the button when rewinding. 

I have a whole load of offcuts in the refrigerator, little rolls of film that were left over after respooling 35mm films into Rapid canisters. Each 12-exposure Rapid canister requires a length of about 60cm of film, and generally I can get two Rapid canisters worth out of a 36-exposure roll of film. However, I discovered that the offcut left over from each roll is about 8 exposures long, so I've started making one Rapid canister from each roll, and using the rest in a regular 35mm camera, which works out at about 20 exposures. 

I took an offcut of Harman Phoenix I (expired 12/2025), and loaded it into the Contessa. I'm aware that the Contessa is over exposing, so I assumed that the 1/200s shutter speed setting was actually exposing at 1/100s. Using the Camera Meter app, I set the aperture accordingly for a 1/100s exposure. We took the Contessa to Vagueira, along with the Ilford Pixie with some really expired film, and used the camera around the town. It turned out that I must have tried to make two Rapid canisters worth out of this 35mm roll, since I only got 8 exposures out of the roll.

After respooling the film into the cassette, I took the exposed film to the Forever Blue in Aveiro for development. I wasn't sure what I was going to get from this, if anything at all, so I went for the 'develop only' option. When I got the negatives back (forty-five minute turnaround from Forever Blue, thank you lads) they were absolutely  amazing and it looks like I might have nailed the exposure. The negatives were scanned with an Epson Perfection v750 Pro flat bed scanner and Epson Scan software. If you're interested, I’ve posted the whole series in an album on my Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/gp/147583812@N06/25e7h8239x).

There were only a few images on this offcut, but I absolutely loved them. The photographs shown are basically how they came out of the scanner. I didn't have to (or want to) make any adjustments at all. The Contessa is definitely going to be one of my 'day out' cameras, even with its limitations.

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