Mastermatic

[PeterW]

Hi all,

Anyone recognise this little rangefinder? It's labelled Prinz Mastermatic, but Prinz was the house-brand name of Dixons in the UK which used to be a chainstore photographic dealers but is now mainly electronics with just a few digital cameras.

I guess it dates from around the 1960s. I've had it some time and I've been trying to find out who made it. Dixons PR people tried to be helpful but said they couldn't trace it.

On the bottom it's got 'made in Germany', and the lens was made by Isco in Gottingen who supplied medium quality lenses to quite a few makers. The shutter is a Prontormat and the camera seems to be aperture priority fully automatic with no indication of the speed on the shutter. You just set the ASA and turn the aperture ring till a pointer lines up with the needle in the meter window on top of the camera.

At the moment the shutter's very slow, it opens and closes leisurely like a slow yawn, but probably just needs the old oil cleaning out. The rangefinder's quite clear but indicates that a distant object is in focus when the scale on the lens front element says it's only 40 feet away, so either it's out of adjustment or the lens isn't set properly at infinity.

The top is a very clean design, with the wind lever underneath the top plate, and the only indications of what holds the top plate on are two small screws under the rewind knob. The shutter release is a push-down lever alongside trhe shutter. The film counter is on the bottom.

I'd like to find out a bit more about it if I can before I tackle the shutter. Sorry about the quality of the pics, my usual little lighting setup is out of commission at the moment so I took a couple of hand held digital pics on my desk and rather hurriedly took out the cluttered background in Photoshop, but they show the camera OK.

I've drawn a complete blank in identifying it, and any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Peter

[paulatukcamera]

I have an identical clone in my hand (shades of the Cosina thread!)

Its a Haponette Automatic and has the same body but a different shutter lens combination - a color Haponar in a 6 speed Prontor shutter. Mine is obviously the "up market" version of yours as it has a coupled rangefinder!

I think you will find that they are all re-branded Regulas from the Black Forest. I would date them to 1962/63

I have both the catalogues for these years in front of me and it seems they were a hybrid for the "own label" market. Basically a Regulette 250 with a meter (as a sign of being built down to a price they use the earliest design Regulette shutter release. The lens is a f2.8 color isconar in a Prontor 4 speed shutter.

Hope that helps solve a mystery.

Paul

[PeterW]

Many thanks, Paul. I did a trawl round the internet looking at Regulas and the nearest I could get to it was the Regula LE 35. Looks identical except that the one illustrated had a Prontor SVS shutter, not a Prontormatic. so it looks like it's an 'automatic LE 35'

It does, btw, have a coupled rangefinder, but when the RF co-incident image suggests infinity it doesn't agree with the distance on the front lens cell, which is at about 40 ft, a short distance before the infinity mark. When I've got the shutter fixed I'll check if the lens scale ring has slipped. If not, I'll have to try to find how the distance scale is coupled.

Actually I wish it had a Prontor SVS instead of a Prontormatic. I don't like the insides of Prontormatics very much, so I hope it needs only a flush-clean job and not a complete strip. But if it does ... oh well, I suppose it all keeps me out of mischief! .

Thanks again for helping me identify it.

Peter