Скачать или смотреть The Zeiss Ikon Box Tengor - King of the Box Cameras? Or Crown Prince of Crap?

I don't want to ruin the surprise for you. But... it's crap.

That's unfair of course. But whatever. I'm allowed not to like a camera.

I actually don't dislike this camera. But everything I've read hailed the Box Tengor as some sort of god among box cameras, and my findings are that that's not true.

So, here are the caveats - 1. this is an old camera, and there is dust, or fungus, or muck, or whatever, on the inside lenses, that allow for close up focusing.

2. As with all box cameras, this has a slow shutter speed, by today's standards. Something like 1/30 or 1/50. Either of those shutter speed give ample opportunity for camera shake, and motion blur. And I wasn't using a tripod.

3. This was the first time using this camera for me, so who knows how I might have done things differently if I had the chance again.

4. Similar to 1), it's old, there could be other issues with the camera that I didn't spot on first pass.

Ok, that's all the caveats out the way. Now here are the findings - more than half of my images were poor. Blurry, focus or motion problems. Whatever it was, the images aren't really usable. Or maybe they are usable, but they weren't what I intended.

I've had box cameras out before where my expectations were low, and I was pleasantly surprised. But this time around I had higher expectations and I was disappointed. My fault for having high expectations? Or is this just not as special as I thought it was?

What do you think? Have you tried a Box Tengor? Let me know in the comments!