Balda 6x6 Folders - Info Please

[ARCHIVIST]

I have a HAPO 66e which most of you may know is a re-badged Balda.

I have used this camera and found the lens to be rather good at f8 or smaller.

On researching Balda 6x6 folders I have found they came with various lenses.

Which would be considered the best of these lenses please?

I am interested in obtaining another ( or a few? ) Balda 6x6 folder.

Regards
Peter

 

[Photog9001]

jk at certo6.com restores and sells them, and probably has info on whatever lenses were available.

(if i'm not mistaken, and i might well be, they came with either triplets or tessar clones. the tessar clones are probably considered the "best", but that depends on how you define best i suppose. on my folder there's one (tessar clone), and it (barrel)distorts ever so slightly, not much but enough to make in_city shots need a little ps correction. but it irritates me a little, and i wonder how a triplet would behave in that sense...)

 

[kuzano]

Hapo Balda....

Hapo Balda....

As I understand it, the Hapo Balda was made by Balda for a European department store named Hans Porst (sp?). Mine had an uncoupled rangefinder which was very accurate, and had the Enna Werke lens which was extremely sharp and quite contrasty. I now have a Balda Baldax which is the same camera and the same Enna Werke lens. The film count/stop and double exposure prevention worked/works excellent on both the cameras.

Some posting here seem to have a later model where the rangefinder is coupled to the lens, so that you don't have to do front cell focusing.

 

[dazedgonebye]

On a balda, you'd be looking for Ennagon, Ennit and Xenar lenses. Those are the 4 element versions.
Stopped down, good results can generally be had with any of the 3 element versions as well.

I don't know what they called the lenses on the Happo cameras.

I have a super baldax with 80mm f2.8 Ennit and it's been very nice. Good results even wide open.

 

[dazedgonebye]

Looking at certo6's site, seems the Ennit and Ennagon names were carried over to the Happo cameras.
I would look for them on either Balda or Happo cameras.

 

[FallisPhoto]

Which would be considered the best of these lenses please?

The Schneider Xenar was the best lens you could get on that camera, hands down. That said, the Ennagon and Ennit lenses were very solid performers, and even the three element lenses Balda used were not bad when stopped down.

 

[ARCHIVIST]

......compared To The Agfa's Solinar Or Apotar?

......compared To The Agfa's Solinar Or Apotar?

Thanks for the information - most helpful.

I was wondering how the lenses you all mentioned would compare to the Agfa Solinar and Apotar? I have several of the little 6x6 Agfa Isolettes and their lenses perform very well ( except the Agnar ).

I must agree that the Xenar would be the best but I have never seen one come up for sale that has been attached to a 6x6 folder.

Regards
Peter

 

[dazedgonebye]

I have no experience with the solinar or apotar.
I can only say that you should be easily satisfied with an Ennit.

 

[Joe Vitessa]

For what it's worth, I've got a Balda Baldix with a Westar lens. I'd say it's comparable to the Ennagon on my Dacora Royal, which is quite good. I think most of the mid-range lenses -- apotar included--are about the same--good when stopped down some. The Solinars are likely a notch better when used wide open.

 

[chippy]

Thanks for the information - most helpful.

I was wondering how the lenses you all mentioned would compare to the Agfa Solinar and Apotar? I have several of the little 6x6 Agfa Isolettes and their lenses perform very well ( except the Agnar ).

I must agree that the Xenar would be the best but I have never seen one come up for sale that has been attached to a 6x6 folder.

Regards
Peter

i'm not sure i recall seeing a xenar on a balda 6x6 either (post war that is,,pre-war yes), tho the odds are there are some! Welta Weltur 6x6 uses the xenar and i am sure there are some pre-war balda's that do. fwiw and just as a little fun fact that doesn't seem to be known, is the 2.8 xenar (not the others) is a five element lens not a 4 like a tessar

 

[ARCHIVIST]

Quote: just as a little fun fact that doesn't seem to be known, is the 2.8 xenar (not the others) is a five element lens not a 4 like a tessar.

It is interesting little facts like this that are well worth knowing.
Thanks chippy.

Regards
Peter

 

[chair_man]

I have a Baldaxette with a Schneider Xenar 75mm/f2.8. The best camera of my folders.
A coupled rangefinder is not easy to use, but works well.
Aha! The xenar lens has five elements? Yes, I identified 5 spots of reflected bright points.

 

[chippy]

your welcome Peter, its nice to have the feedback.

i picked up on it after translating a german catalogue discribing the attributes of the various lenses on offer. i then contacted Schnieder Optics asking if they could confirm and give any more details. they replied that all information is lost and more importantly the people that would know are all ...well kinda dead now!!! kinda funny in way (or is that sarcasium lol). but they kept looking and emailed their offices/contacts around the world who mostly got back to me with 'sorry we don't know' but eventually in thier achives in europe they dug up some information confirming with diagrams and sent them to me...i was pleased and thought they were very helpfull 🙂

so i find it interesting how things spread re xenar always being discribed as a 4 element tessar copy when it appears quite different to a tessar. just goes to show that once something is said on the net it kinda just spreads with everyone repeating what someone else once said...or maybe it started many years before the net was around *shrugs*

 

[FallisPhoto]

Thanks for the information - most helpful.

I was wondering how the lenses you all mentioned would compare to the Agfa Solinar and Apotar? I have several of the little 6x6 Agfa Isolettes and their lenses perform very well ( except the Agnar ).

I must agree that the Xenar would be the best but I have never seen one come up for sale that has been attached to a 6x6 folder.

Regards
Peter

The 4-element Solinar is pretty much equivalent to a Tessar. The Xenar, in my opinion, is just a tad better (not much, but kind of noticable in the corners). The Apotar is a 3-element cooke triplet, but it was one of the better ones. Apotars are very good lenses -- if you shoot stopped down.

The problem you are going to run into with Apotars (and Solinars, for that matter) is that Agfa/Ansco cameras used that damned grease that polymerizes, turns green, and sets up like road tar. Nearly all of them that are still functioning have been taken apart at some point (in order to get the grease out) and the people taking them apart rarely marked the position of the lens elements first. This means that 90% of them have been recalibrated -- by amateurs -- with wildly varying degrees of success.

 

[ARCHIVIST]

Thank you to chippy and FallisPhoto for their postings.
It is the information surrounding the originally sought after info that is sometimes of more interest.

Also, chippy, your archival processing pdf was sent about 5 minutes ago.

Regards
Peter

 

[FallisPhoto]

Thanks for the information - most helpful.

I was wondering how the lenses you all mentioned would compare to the Agfa Solinar and Apotar? I have several of the little 6x6 Agfa Isolettes and their lenses perform very well ( except the Agnar ).

I must agree that the Xenar would be the best but I have never seen one come up for sale that has been attached to a 6x6 folder.

Regards
Peter

Oh, about Agnars: Once in a blue moon, if you collect Agfas/Anscos (or fix up other people's cameras), you may stumble on an Agnar that is surprisingly sharp -- at least when stopped down. This suggests that their quality was (understatement of the year) somewhat variable.

 

[FallisPhoto]

I must agree that the Xenar would be the best but I have never seen one come up for sale that has been attached to a 6x6 folder.

I believe that some of the the Welta Weltur 6x6s also had Xenar lenses. Can't think of any other 6x6 cameras though, except of course for Rolleis.

 

[dazedgonebye]

The xenar on my Retina is nice...not that that matters.

Seriously, go for the Ennit if you see one. The Super Baldax cameras are getting hard to come buy and have been rising steadily in price for the year or so I've been watching. I'm very satisfied with the quality out of the Ennit lens on my camera.

 

[chippy]

indeed the super baldax is an appealing camera to me, with a host of features!!--i remember seeing this pic and steve's camera in another post--the filter size and set up on those is handy too.

FWIW the 3.5 xenar is only 4 elements like a tessar...also another fun fact is the kodak ektar on those retinas (at least the early ones that i know of) are schnieder xenar lenses rebadged by kodak as ektar..ektar of course as many know is the name kodak gave to whatever lens they had at the time that was their best offering


edit; oh and thanks Peter! received it. i have to see now how i can apply those steps now that i have an ATL machine...

 

[dazedgonebye]

The 40.5mm filter size and f2.8 vs f3.5 lens are the reasons I prefer the Balda to my very nice Iskra.
The film advance on my Balda does not work as well as it should, so I'm using the red windows...which I hate.
I do like taking pics like the one above, and that was only possible because of an 8x ND filter.