1938 Voigtländer Focussing Brillant

Manufactured in 1938, the Brillant V6 was the first Voigtländer Brillant TLR with a coupled focusing mechanism rather than zone focusing. It takes 120 roll film and produces twelve 6x6cm negatives. This one has a few battle scars including missing the Voigtländer name plate and one of the side shields to the focusing hood, but for a 80+ year old we think that’s excusable, particularly as it still has the yellow cloud filter and extinction meter which tend to be missing on most of these cameras for sale nowadays! It has a bakelite body which makes it look remarkably fresh and like new, but would probably shatter if dropped. Frame winding is a bit tricky as the mechanism is not coupled to the shutter, so multiple exposures are easy to occur if you forgot to advance the film. The images are amazingly good for what was a relatively cheap camera for its day. There’s significant vignetting when you use the cloud filter, particularly at wide apertures, but it does give a nice vintage look to the photographs and hey who doesn’t apply vignettes to their pristine digital pictures these days?!