Zeiss Compendium East West

For collectors of wartime and post-war Zeiss cameras, from both East and West Germany, including Voigtlander, and the Soviet clones. The authors unravel the complex story of the Zeiss Stiftung and provide comprehensive tables of all models.

The fourth volume in a history of photography, this is a bibliography of books on the subject.

Books about war and the pictures that came out of conflict usually concentrate on the picture content. But behind every picture there is a camera – and that’s what this book is about. Profusely illustrated throughout with pictures of the cameras, rather than the pictures they took, it looks at 100 years of conflict from the Crimean War to the Korean War. It begins in the days when a photographer needed to be more of a scientist than an artist, such were the difficulties of shooting and processing any photograph. It ends with the cameras whose compact dimensions, versatility and ease of use meant that photographers could largely forget the science and concentrate on the art. Some cameras simply recorded events. Others defined and changed the way those events proceeded. These were the cameras that went to war, and this is their story.

The story of the birth of Zeiss Ikon by the mergers of 1926; the resulting fantastic array of cameras in the Zeiss catalogue, followed by rationalization and development of new cameras, especially the Contax and other 35mm cameras, up to the outbreak of war in 1939. The final part lists Zeiss Ikon cameras from 1926 to 1939.

It is a pleasure to present this work, which has been well received in German-speaking countries through four editions, to the English-speaking reader. We feel that this is a unique publication in that it contains valuable material that cannot easily-if at all-be found elsewhere. We are grateful to the authors for reading through the English version of the text, and for responding promptly (for the most part) to our queries. Several authors have supplied us, on their own initiative or at our suggestion, with revised and updated manuscripts and with supplementary English references. We have striven to achieve a translation of Handbuch for Sternfreunde which accurately presents the qualitative and quantitative scientific principles con tained within each chapter while maintaining the flavor of the original Ger man text. Where appropriate, we have inserted footnotes to clarify material which may have a different meaning and/or application in English-speaking countries from that in Germany. When the first English edition of this work, Astronomy: A Handbook (translated by the late A. Beer), appeared in 1975, it contained 21 chapters. This new edition is over twice the length and contains 28 authored chap ters in three volumes. At Springer's request, we have devised a new title, Compendium of Practical Astronomy, to more accurately reflect the broad spectrum of topics and the vast body of information contained within these pages.