Contax III, with DIN or WF.ST sensitivity scale

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Mauricio Mo

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Hello everyone. apparently I have a Contax III, but on the dial of the sensitivity scale, instead of DIN, says WEST
It is a part of Kiev?
The serial number is short E 9342
I do not know if it is a Kiev camera converted to Contax III.
What do you think?
 
ГОСТ, maybe? That is GOST, the USSR film speed standard, and would make it a Kiev part. Or camera...

There also were Weston film speeds, which I've seen abbreviated as WFS on sheet film boxes - but that was odd even on much older film, in Contax time the common nomenclature was "Weston" (and it had already been superseded by ASA for a decade). If it should nonetheless be a abbreviation of Weston, the camera will also feature a distance scale in ft rather than meter - so that should be easy to identify.
 
Positively WEST, which will make it Weston scale. The distance scale on the mount ought to be imperial (ft) rather than metric, then - at least if the camera is neither a repairman's own creation nor a special order.
 
sevo said:
Positively WEST, which will make it Weston scale. The distance scale on the mount ought to be imperial (ft) rather than metric, then - at least if the camera is neither a repairman's own creation nor a special order.
Click to expand...

Ok, then is a Weston scale, but the mount is in meters, then it's a repair?
a hybrid? or a special order?
thanks
 
Vics said:
My IIIa doesn't have anything that looks like that.
Click to expand...

By the time of the IIIa, most of the proprietary film rating systems were history, the IIIa appears to have only come in either DIN or ASA. But both systems were young and not fully adopted yet when the Contax III was released, so it is not unlikely that were offered with Weston, Scheiner or BSI engraved knobs in some markets.

Still, the combination of the very US (the British empire used BSI in the same period) Weston system with the very non-US metric distance scale is odd - did Central and/or South America use Weston?

Another idea: What do the sensitivity scale values read? The Weston system preceded ASA and used the same scale, that is, the familiar 25,50,100,200,400 sequence, while GOST used a slightly odd 32,65,130,250,500 series - even if some faker manipulated the ГОСТ or GOST (some early Ukrainian and many export models had latin engravings) into a WEST, he could hardly deal with the knob scale the same way.
 
Vics said:
My IIIa doesn't have anything that looks like that. See if this old website helps:
http://www.zeisshistorica.org/sample.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, very interesting information, I have searched in the the web, Flickr, and on ebay, images of Contax III, and I have not seen a single camera with WEST sensitivity on the dial, so I thought it is a Russian camera, then looked for pictures of Kiev, and I have not seen one that says WEST.
So
 
sevo said:
By the time of the IIIa, most of the proprietary film rating systems were history, the IIIa appears to have only come in either DIN or ASA. But both systems were young and not fully adopted yet when the Contax III was released, so it is not unlikely that were offered with Weston, Scheiner or BSI engraved knobs in some markets.

Still, the combination of the very US (the British empire used BSI in the same period) Weston system with the very non-US metric distance scale is odd - did Central and/or South America use Weston?

Another idea: What do the sensitivity scale values read? The Weston system preceded ASA and used the same scale, that is, the familiar 25,50,100,200,400 sequence, while GOST used a slightly odd 32,65,130,250,500 series - even if some faker manipulated the ГОСТ or GOST (some early Ukrainian and many export models had latin engravings) into a WEST, he could hardly deal with the knob scale the same way.
Click to expand...

This is a Contax III and the sesitivity scale read: 3 6 (a red dot) 12 24 50 1C 2C
 
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