*not true, many other camera have it
Chris, some grave misconceptions are being forwarded on here. whilst i too appreciate and admire the Zeiss Ikon company history and more so some of their designers contributions to the photographic world, by no stretch of the imagination could it be said that the S/Ikonta IV was the pinnacle design, in fact it could easily be argued quite the opposite, that apart from the facelift it received (styled chrome top that others makers had already introduced-check out what the japenese had been doing to their S/Ikonta camera clones for years!) and the onboard photo-electric light meter (NOT coupled) that is of little to no use to us nowadays and a nice but small benefit back in the late 50s. As nice as it is the S/Ikonta IV was crudely speaking basically a relic from the late 1920's (it was at the forefront back then!) to being well behind the times in the late 50s!!!
to attempt to describe, if you look back in time to the 20's & 30's then you would see that mid to high end non-self erecting folders (mostly on this forum we see/talk about 'self erecting' folders`,nothing wrong with the older folders but the lenses are commonly slower although some are amazing!) were always unit focusing cameras; whereby the whole lens, as a 'unit' moves past the infinity mark to focus on something closer--same principle as the old and modern pro field or studio camera/lens set ups.
camera manufacturers in the old days wanted to sell as many cameras as possible ,including to every day snap shot family ppl, just like canon, olympus and nikon etc do today so they also sold camera with fixed front standard that made the camera significantly cheaper to produce, doing away with the sliding track and everything associated with it. to make the camera cheap but still photograph good enough for the weekend family snap shot or amateur that didnt know any better, so they produced cameras that just the front cell moves further out from the film plane to focus=much much cheaper to make but quality suffers somewhat at certain distances
Zeiss Ikon being as huge a company as they were naturally wanted in on this market and developed and sold the cheaper front cell focusing camera as well, in fact it became their mainstream for folders!! try to find a Ziess unit focusing folding camera!!! some opposing manufactures including Welta started to offer built in rangefinder as well
with everyone else offering coupled Rf, 1934-35 Zeiss had to do the same but unfortunately having already spent significant R&D on their camera body designs, their RF had to be adapted to the front cell focusing body they already had and were committed too--big disappointmemt to the photographic community no doubt but Ziess Ikon's huge marketing machine and good build quality was good enough to overshadow this, the quality of the final image was secondary to all but those photographers who knew better
after the war and by the late fifties Zeiss are still using the same basic antiquated front cell focusing 120 folder design, finaly a small upgrade to the focusing wedge which mostly makes it look like its competitors better engineered unit focusing camera designs but still isnt! i have no doubt this point alone fooled some ppl. To be sure, the S/Ikonta wasnt good enough in 1938 to serious photographers and by the late fifties is a joke that they are still offering the same basic defunk system, even though its dressed up with a light meter now is no excuse (all their R&D is going into other equipment at this stage and for some time now)
in the late 50's there are a number of other cameras that can produce better pictures on offer to the critical photographer, from a number of makers, not withstanding the Agfa S/Isolette that easily out does the S/Ikonta in the quality of the pictures, Certo 6, Balda Super baldax, the Weltur produces better pictures and it is 2 decades older!, the Mamiya 6 Automatic was more advanced, automaticaly cocking the shutter while winding on and produces better pics (Sekor lens on last models is notably better than the earlier Zuiko's used) or how about the Agfa Automatic 66 that has automatic AE mode, mechanical, air driven shutter control no less!!!
