Zeiss Ikon Nettar camera

As you know I love older cameras and film.
When I got the chance to bought two cleaned and working Zeiss Ikon Nettar cameras a while ago I jumped at the opportunity and bought the cameras. These cameras are not only cool to use as a prop but also to shoot with. The first camera I tested is a 6×9 camera (I also got a 6×6)

The fun thing about these cameras is not only the look but the fact they shoot with normal 120 film which is still available. Operating the camera can be a bit of a shock for some because everything is manually and a little bit of guess work.

Loading the film is like most older cameras, do it once and it will be easy.
The camera itself has a shutterspeed that can be set to a maximum of 1/200 after which you have to cock the shutter before every shot, aperture can also be set of course, in this case from 4.5-22.

Focus is another story.
Because there is no real viewfinder, only a “viewfinder” that is giving you more of an aim, you will have to work with the so called zone focus, meaning you calculate the distance to your subject and turn the dial for the focus to the distance and shoot (and hope). All the settings are really easy and smooth so operating the camera shouldn’t be a real problem. What you do have to take notice off is the film advance, this is also 100% manually so when you forget it… you will have a double exposure, which can be used very creatively of course.

The outcome of the images really got me by surprise, I expected something similar to “lomo” or in other words, not really that good, but when I scanned the negatives I got something that I did not expect. The images are razor sharp (I even guestimated the focus right on 6 of the 8 images) and I just love the look of the files. I used FujiFilm 400 negative film and the Epson V700 for scanning.

What I like especially about the images is the three dimensionality and the way the colors look (mostly due to the film used), having 6×9 negatives also gives you a great working resolution, I guess that after scanning with the Epson V700 and a carefully adjusted Better scanning holder there is app 100MP of usable resolution. It’s not as pinsharp as my Leaf Credo60 can be but it’s close when down scaled to 100MP and that is something that is fun of course with a camera that old.