Voss Diax Ia / Ib
Introduced in 1952, the Diax Ia was the third camera produced by Walter Voss and his company based in Ulm, Germany. It was preceded by the Diax and Diax I cameras and further evolved their design in a couple of significant ways. At its heart, the Diax Ia is a 35mm viewfinder camera as it lacks a rangefinder for focusing. But the Diax Ia did introduce the ability to change lenses. Using a proprietary 54mm thread one can easily remove the lens of the Diax Ia and swap it out for a variety of other lenses. In order to facilitate these additional focal lengths the Diax Ia has three viewfinders for three different lenses: 45-50mm, 35mm and 90mm.
In function, the Diax Ia is a pretty simple and straight-forward camera. It is actually the same in build as well, being notable for its stripped-down mechanics. Diax cameras do not share the incredible intricacy and complexity of other German contemporaries. As such, they can be surprisingly reliable, even after decades, and are also quite easy to fix. But that is a slight tangent from where we were heading with this paragraph, so let's circle back around, shall we? The Diax Ia has a Synchro-Compur leaf shutter located behind the lens. Shutter speeds are set manually between 1 second up to 1/500, plus Bulb, via a ring at the base of the lens. A focus ring is located just in front of that, followed by an aperture ring at the front of the lens barrel. The top of the Diax Ia has the shutter button and film advance knob you would expect to find, along with a film type/speed reminder dial (which also serves as a film rewind knob) and an accessory shoe. The base of the camera has the door latch. An M/X sync switch is tucked onto the base of the lens mount right next to a PC-socket... and that is about all there is to this camera!
Oh, I guess we do have one more little goody for you. The Diax Ia has sort of a hidden self-timer. Normally the shutter arming lever is automatically set when winding the film by a mechanism coupled to the advance knob, but if you press the lever a bit farther in a clockwise direction it sets up a mechanical self-timer for you. A common feature on such cameras but designed on this one in a way that is easy to miss.
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