ravenxarmy
Established
Hello,
I have been using the pre-war BESSA I for some years and it's been giving me an extremely hard time with focusing not to mention the camera I had was all over the place with shutter speeds. This week I finally gave up on it and upgraded to BESSA II Heliar with coupled rangefinder. It arrived yesterday and it feels like moving from a bicycle to a Harley.
The camera I bought is quite interesting, I haven't been able to find ANY information on it whatsoever so I thought I'd try here.
It looks identical to the model I found the instructions for here:
https://www.cameramanuals.org/voigtlander_pdf/voigtlander_bessa-model_2.pdf
However, it comes with an engraving J A Riggler or maybe J A Riggles??
Has anybody ever seen another example of it? Was it personalised by the previous owner perhaps? Or was it stock Voigtlander model? The engraving looks stock, exactly the same as the Voigtlander and BESSA logos above and below it.
Another interesting bit is that on the inside it is written in something that looks like a pencil:
"Gift from Voigtlander Co on 50th anniversary 1948 - (something that looks like a name? Nillergebby(??) NYC???)"
Please see pictures.
Does anybody know what this thing is? I'd appreciate any info.
***
Also while on the subject I was wondering if there's any way to attach a dioptric lens to this camera? I have temporarily taped a NIKON one over the rangefinder but it's a short term solution. I looked on the internet but haven't found anything really.
I have been using the pre-war BESSA I for some years and it's been giving me an extremely hard time with focusing not to mention the camera I had was all over the place with shutter speeds. This week I finally gave up on it and upgraded to BESSA II Heliar with coupled rangefinder. It arrived yesterday and it feels like moving from a bicycle to a Harley.
The camera I bought is quite interesting, I haven't been able to find ANY information on it whatsoever so I thought I'd try here.
It looks identical to the model I found the instructions for here:
https://www.cameramanuals.org/voigtlander_pdf/voigtlander_bessa-model_2.pdf
However, it comes with an engraving J A Riggler or maybe J A Riggles??
Has anybody ever seen another example of it? Was it personalised by the previous owner perhaps? Or was it stock Voigtlander model? The engraving looks stock, exactly the same as the Voigtlander and BESSA logos above and below it.
Another interesting bit is that on the inside it is written in something that looks like a pencil:
"Gift from Voigtlander Co on 50th anniversary 1948 - (something that looks like a name? Nillergebby(??) NYC???)"
Please see pictures.
Does anybody know what this thing is? I'd appreciate any info.
***
Also while on the subject I was wondering if there's any way to attach a dioptric lens to this camera? I have temporarily taped a NIKON one over the rangefinder but it's a short term solution. I looked on the internet but haven't found anything really.




