Certo
Rare! 6x6 1936 CERTO Super Sport Dolly, CLA'd, Freshly Serviced!
Cleaned, Lubricated & Adjusted. Ready for immediate use
Over the past few weeks we’ve been selling off some very desirable classic prewar cameras. In this listing we have a very hard to find SS Dolly. It’s a camera built by Certo in Germany in circa 1936. It was a compact, high spec camera. It was very popular with photographers and most of them were used very intensively. Its compact size and relatively large film format made it easy to carry and never gave you a reason to leave it behind. Certo didn’t make a lot of these cameras and many didn’t survive the war and all the decades of use afterwards, as a result you’re very unlikely to find one now-a-days.
Personally I’m also fond of the archaic details such as the rear door with an intricate looking depth of field chart which folds out to reveal the film counter windows and a white celluloid plate on which you could record notes in pencil. I also like the red cross hairs in the optical viewfinder. The Super Sport Dolly is also wrapped in what is arguably the loveliest leather to grace a camera. These features make this camera very popular with collectors as well. Few are willing to sell them. Because of this and the relatively low production numbers the German SS Dolly will always be desirable and hard to find camera.
This camera is in exceptionally fine condition. It produces 6x6 exposures on normal 120 roll film. It’s been carefully cleaned, lubricated and adjusted. The Compur- shutter works smoothly and all speeds (B, T & 1 sec - 1/250th) are appropriate. The slow speeds buzz along nicely and the fast speeds are clean and snappy. The bellows are supple and completely light tight.
The lens is a f3.5/75mm Corygon-Anastigmat, it’s a classic three element design based on the classic Cooke triplet. A design that’s very popular lens because of the lovely balance of sharpness, rendering and bokeh. The lens on this camera is exceptionally clean and looks virtually new. There are no scratches and it’s capable of producing very lovely photos with modern color and B&W films.
All in all a wonderful classic camera. What ever you do, load it with your favorite film and keep it handy for that perfect shot you’ve been looking for. You know the one... the one with the perfect Ansel Adams light breaking through the dark storm clouds that leaves you wishing you had a classic medium format camera with you.