What about a Super Baldina?

[tunalegs]

I made an impulse buy on ebay. Odd German camera I had never heard of before, ending in a couple minutes - 0 bids - $5. Impulsively I put in the minimum and waited to see if anybody else would bid. Nobody did and I won the camera. It appears to be a Super Baldina rangefinder with the pull out lens. I know nothing about these cameras. I looked on flickr for examples of photos but it's not much use because Balda also made a completely different Super Baldina with bellows, and the sort like I bought all seem to have come with different lenses from different suppliers, etc.

What I'm more interested in then is to hear from anybody who has used one of these, what their impressions of the camera were. Is it big? Is it well made? Does it have a nice viewfinder? For $5 it's no big deal if it is a lemon, but the lack of information makes me very curious to hear about it.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Pherdinand]

haha.
I made an impulse buy as well. A pre-war super baldina with the folding design, xenon 50/2 lens. Then it turned out it does have some issues. I found about NOBODY on the Web that has a super baldina and can help me with suggestions fixin it 😀
I opened it up myself
It had a blocked film transport stopping mechanism and a jumping counter mechanism (so it would wind on and on and jam sometimes randomly)
I kinda fixed the transport
the counter is still shot- too old.

Not a very robust design. Once you open it up to see the insides, amateurish workmanship is visible... Not designed for the 70 years it already has in it.

The rangefinder is super squinty and difficult to use by todays standards. Even by 1930s standards, if we compared it to zeiss or leitz rangefinders.

The lens is nice, though.

What do u mean by the pull out lens? Not bellows (not folder) but another design? I guess you have the postwar version then, might be different transport./counter design too. Maybe you wont have any problems with it. I hope so.

 

[RichardP]

Sounds like one of these with a collapsible lens:
http://steveingramphoto.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/balda-super-baldina-shootin-1950s-style.html

 

[Solinar]

Does the Super Baldina look something like the one below:

[/url]Super Baldina by SteveMPhoto, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[tunalegs]

Yes it looks just like that. I have it now. Interesting camera, rather compact except in height. Large-ish viewfinder with 1:1 viewing. The lens collapses but this barely makes any difference in the size of the camera. Extremely smooth and light film advance.

 

[MANFRED]

I have one of these and it's on sale on teabay just now. Periscope-type pop-up lens. Decent mid-range camera, well made and easy to use. The listing has a couple of photos I took with it.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SERVICED-...f2-8-50-rangefinder-lovely-case-/231733355469

 

[ray*j*gun]

Soliciting here without listing in the classified is a no-no.