So, the Zeiss Icon Voigtländer 500 SE Electronic and the Zeiss Icon Voigtländer 1000 SR are very similar brothers from an era of iconic mid-century design and innovation. (There is also another brother, the 500AE but I’m going to ignore that) I have had the 500 for a while but wanted try the 1000. It was a while before I could get my hands on one; finally I did and it’s a great little camera.
I was idly browsing my emails when I saw one from Mike Eckman revealing his week’s picks for recommended reading; I am always happy to receive these as they often point me at interesting posts I may otherwise miss. On this occasion though, one of his recommendations was for a post I had already planned to read but this did prompt me to actually get on with doing just that.
I have to be honest that until now I didn’t know that Mamiya made 35mm Rangefinders. I saw this one by chance and was intrigued enough to act on whim, paying at the upper end of my comfortable price-range for buying a camera I wasn’t looking for and don’t really need. This takes my camera count dangerously close to 50 (anyone want to buy a camera or two?). Mamiya is a name I trust, having a great but slowly dying C330 TLR and I thought (is “thought” the right word? – this was definitely heart over mind but anyway) I thought “why not?”
So this is the Voigtländer Vito C which is not to be confused with the Voigtländer Vito C. The crazy re-use of model names by Voigtländer and its subsequent parent companies is one thing about Voigtländer cameras which I don’t like.
