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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Rare Camera Store Vintage

This Voigtlander Bessa II Shoots 120 Film and Has a Pretty Rare Lens

Chris Gampat
No Comments
09/29/2021
3 Mins read
Voigtlander Bessa II

It’s truly hard to beat the look of some vintage medium format cameras. Take for example this Voigtlander Bessa II. Lots of folks love shooting with their Mamiya RB67 and Pentax 67. But why not go for 6×9 format instead? Well that’s what the Voigtlander Bessa II is. This beauty is a 69 format rangefinder camera with a pretty fast f4.9 lens. To translate to 35mm parameters, that’s a 45mm f1.9 equivalence. What’s more, this is a pretty rare lens. However, it still has all the great rendering of a medium format camera. 

Welcome to the Rare Camera Store: a joint initiative of The Phoblographer and the wonderful folks at Blue Moon Camera. We work to bring you some of the coolest and rarest items for a great price.

The listing over at Blue Moon Camera says:

“The Voigtlander Bessa II (serial number 3670621) is a vertically folding, medium format camera that uses 120 film and produces an image that is 6cm x 9cm. This camera has the rarer APO-Lanthar lens mounted in a shutter that has been overhauled recently. The 105mm focal length lens on a 6cm x 9cm image is roughly equivalent to a 42mm focal length lens on a standard 35mm image.”

“This camera comes with its original case and strap.  The leather hand strap on the body of the camera has broken with age and can no longer be used for carrying the camera.”

From what we can find, the Rare Camera Store partnership is selling it for a relative steal. We’ve seen it go for over $9,000 on eBay. But Blue Moon Camera has it for $5,900. What’s more, it’s fully working. And that’s an insanely difficult price to beat.

About the Voigtlander Bessa II with the Rare 105mm f4.5 Lens

Because it’s a vertically folding camera, it’s ideal for portraiture. That’s what we’re sure lots of photographers will use it for. It can do landscapes, sure, but a lens like this belongs in a studio or a controlled lighting environment shooting portraits. (At least that’s what I think!) Despite that, we dove into Flickr to find images shot with the Bessa II with the 105mm f4.5. We found a stunning landscape photo shot on film, but we’re not sure which emulsion. Photographer Ian Booth shot it using Ilford FP4 film to great effect. In fact, most images there that were shot with the Voigtlander Bessa II are landscapes.

The folks at Camerapedia say that this is the most renowned of the Bessa cameras. They were made in the 1950s. The shutter speeds go up to 1/500th and slow down to bulb mode. The lens stops down to f22–which is still reasonably shallow for 6×9 format cameras. And, of course, they’re rangefinder cameras. The rangefinder in the Bessa II should still be reasonably bright for a camera of that time. Just make sure you don’t block any light from hitting the camera. It will need to soak in all that light to help you nail the focus. As you would with a Leica camera, you’ll have to line the image up in the frame. This too is something done on later Voigtlander Bessa 35mm rangefinder cameras.

According to CameraWest, the lens flares considerably. So that means that you’re most likely going to use a UV filter, maybe an improvised lens hood, and you’re going to control the light a lot. However, lens flare can be really cool if you work with it. 

105mm f4.5 69 format 6x9 6x9 format blue moon camera film lens medium format rare rare camera store vintage camera voigtlander voigtlander bessa ii
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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