Germany: Better Focus

Strong as ever in the precision quality of their work but slow to innovate, the fine old German camera-making companies have seen their share of the world market slip from 55% eleven years ago to 25% last year. Last week, as shutterbugs swarmed through Cologne’s ninth “Photokina,” the biggest camera exhibit in the world, the Germans made a big bid to show that they are thinking most positively about negatives.

Among the new products displayed:

∙MINIATURES. Rollei-Werke has developed its first precision miniature camera for standard 35-mm. film, the Rollei 35, priced just under $125. Other tiny cameras have been on the market for years, but they sacrificed quality by using miniature film. The Rollei 35 is hardly bigger than a king-size pack of cigarettes, weighs 14 oz., comes with a built-in meter, a shutter speed up to 1/500th of a second, and a 40-mm. f3.5 Zeiss Tessar lens.

∙REFLEX CAMERAS. The single-lens reflex camera, the most popular machine among amateurs, was displayed in many new varieties. Zeiss unveiled its $500 single-lens Contarex Electronic with an electronically controlled shutter, and the $100 Icarex 126 equipped to use easy-loading Kodapak film. Rollei, which made the first twin-lens reflex in 1929, came out with the single-lens SL66 with a tilting lens plane that improves depth of field focusing.

∙LENSES. Improved optical glass and computer calculations have led to new lenses that were impossible to make before. Zeiss has an f0.70 lens, 100 times faster than the human eye in daylight, for general photography, and a 110° wide-angle lens free of distortions. Schneider has a movie-projection lens that without alterations can handle nor mal and widescreen, Cinemascope and Todd-AO film.

Not all the successes at Cologne were German. With hardly an exception, all the new quick-loading cameras are equipped to use Kodapak rather than its German rival, Agfa’s Rapid. Kodak also took honors in fast, mass processing of film: the company’s new 2620 color printer produces 2,000 color prints an hour.