Behind every camera purchase, there is a reason.  Yeah sure, sometimes that reason is at the "oops my credit card fell out of my wallet and into your chip reader, guess I'll take the camera" end of the spectrum, but often the reasons for a new camera purchase are quite serious and thought through.  We are not sure exactly where the Voigtlander Prominent falls on that scale.  Maybe it breaks the scale just a bit.  See, if you want the best rangefinder money can buy, you will likely get a Leica M6 or something similar.  If you want a compact, reliable, and less expensive rangefinder, you might end up with a Kodak Retina IIIC...  So what would be kicking around in a prospective Voigtlander Prominent owner's head?  It could be a few things.  Maybe you like eccentricity?  Or maybe you appreciate cameras of distinct aesthetic beauty?  Perhaps you like the rare?  The Prominent will definitely fill all three of these needs.

The Voigtlander Prominent is a strange camera that gives you the sense that a lot of time and effort went into its design.  Introduced in 1950, the Prominent was a top-of-the-line 35mm rangefinder, meant to compete with the likes of Contax, Leica, Canon, and Nikon.  Voigtlander chose to eschew the focal plane shutters that were becoming popular in rangefinder cameras and stick with a leaf shutter that sat behind the lens - similar, in fashion, to the Retina II and III cameras.  This gives the Prominent the typical range of shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/500 and allows for flash sync at any of those speeds.  It also restricted the types of lenses Voigtlander was able to design for the camera.  Over the decade it was manufactured, there were only six lenses made available: a 50mm f/1.5 Nokton (an excellent lens by the way), a 50mm f/2 Ultron, a 50mm f/3.5 Color-Skopar (yes, half the lens selection was 50mm lenses), a 35mm f/3.5 Skoparon, a 100mm f/4.5 Dynaron and, finally, a 150mm f/4.5 Super-Dynaron.  Voigtlander made tons of nifty accessories and gadgets for the Prominent to turn it into a system camera, but it was always severely limited by its lens selection, especially on the wide angle front.

Despite the slightly wonky shutter/lens design choices, the Prominent wins awards for being one of the most beautiful 35mm rangefinders ever produced.  From the prominent (sorry, couldn't resist) use of chrome, to the styling of the camera's many fine details, the Prominent is a thing of beauty.  Its aesthetic does help offset some of its more awkward ergonomics.  This is why the Prominent ends up in such an odd niche.  It really isn't the easiest camera to use, yet it was a camera whose design plays testament to the efforts of Voigtlander engineers.  It is an innovative and ingenious camera, but it innovated in the wrong way as much as the right.  In short, it is a complex solution to the challenges of the time, rather than an elegant one.  That being said, every camera has a place and every camera has a user who will love it.  The Prominent may be an eccentric camera, but it is beautifully eccentric and still enormously capable camera.  They have stood the test of time and often continue working quite well.  The lenses are  very good, even by modern standards.  It is very capable of being the gem of any camera collection.

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