Voigtländer Perkeo 1

Last fall, on Facebook, I came across a promo for the Montreal Camera Show, promising great bargains and unusual finds, as a buy/sell/trade opportunity, for “Everything photographic, new or used, including digital and film cameras, lenses, flashes, accessories, fresh and expired film, etc.” Intrigued, and hoping to maybe even find an additional film back for the Mamiya RB67 (more on this camera in a future post), I made the drive into Montreal to visit the show at an airport-area hotel.

 

By the way, they have an upcoming show, on May 7, 2023.

 

While I did not find a film back for the RB67, I got more than my money’s worth from a learning and entertainment standpoint: plenty of really interesting gear, and interesting people too.  Plus I left the show with two items that indeed qualified as great bargains and unusual finds.  

First, I found a solid tripod for one of my kids to photograph her pottery for her Etsy store:  Atelier Bradley -- One of a kind handmade pottery. And I scored the big brother of the camera I wrote about in the last post, the Vito II: for all of $50 (Canadian), I bought a Voigtländer Perkeo 1.

The Perkeo 1, like the Vito, is a vertical folding camera, with a bellows that extends when you open the camera. It has a Vaskar f4.5/75mm lens, so likely the first production run of the camera according the what I have been able to find on this rig on the camera wiki. That would mean it was built in 1952, 71 years ago. 

Compared to the Vito, the upside is the film size, the much larger negative resulting in greater resolution and detail at an equivalent film speed.  And when folded, it is not much larger than the Vito, still easily a pocketable camera. The principal downside is the lack of an automatic film counter, so when advancing the film, you need to look through the little red window on the back of the camera, and look for the frame count printed on the film back through the window as you advance the film. I have overshot in poor light and wasted a few frames...

As you can see by the photos of the two Voigtländers side-by-side, the Perkeo 1 (right) is in incredibly good shape, with no evident wear and tear, as compared to the Vito II that, while not having been used in many decades, nonetheless shows signs of having been well used over its lifetime.

 

The Perkeo 1 takes incredible photographs, and is dollar-for-dollar, the best photographic value I have ever come across.  Later I will post photos I took with the Perkeo and the Vito when visiting family in upstate NY during US Thanksgiving, but for now, here are shots from the first roll of film I ran through the camera this past October. 

 

The film was Ilford HP5 Plus 400 ISO, and the shots were taken at Parc régional Bois de Belle-Rivière, between Saint-Benoit and Sainte-Scholastique, Québec (plus a bonus picture of the front porch), and developed and scanned by Canadian Film Lab.