Restoration Baltimore: 1947 in Color (Part 1)

Anyone who follows this page with any degree of regularity knows that I completely love vintage color slides of scenes taken around the 1940's and 1950's.  

And many know that I've a certain fondness for scenes in and around my hometown of Baltimore.

But what few people may know is just how tough it is to find original color slides taken in the Monumental City amid the heyday of these decades.  It seems one can readily find original color slides of big cities such as Chicago and New York, while one can also find many scenes of small town life with some searching.  I've managed to assemble an interesting collage of images spanning all the way from California to Florida, and from Montana to Texas.

But still, original scenes of my hometown in color have been terribly elusive.  I've managed at times to find a few, such as from atop Federal Hill, near the Harbor Tunnel, and along the city's streetcar lines, but slice of life scenes of Downtown in color have been all but non-existent.

And then there they were.  Five scenes taken in Baltimore on original color slides, and available for auction.  I dug in, placed my bid and won these rare images.  Finally, I had some shots of Charm City similar to those I'd feature weekly on my Kodachrome features.

But the only problem is that they weren't Kodachromes.  These were taken on much more unstable Ansco stock, and the color had shifted pretty drastically.  In addition, the emulsion had signs of serious damage from the decades.  Making these images into something presentable would require me to try to use most of the tricks I had learned about scanning and restoring images.  These would require significant time and effort, but I felt they were worth it.  

Below are two of the results of this restoration project, showing an unrestored original scan, and the final results below, as well a street view inlay to show what the viewpoint looks like today.  I hope you feel these were as worth the effort as I did.   

A (somewhat less than) Super Ikonta

All told, I'd had a lucky streak when it came to picking up cameras from ebay.  I had picked up a very capable TLR in the Yashica 12, as well as over half a dozen medium format folding cameras.  While I had encountered a few letdowns along the way, I came away from each initial test roll of a new camera with usable photos as well as some valuable insights on what situations for each camera would be useful.

In early December, I stumbled across a very attractive auction listing for a very good looking Zeiss Super Ikonta, for an opening bid of just under $100.  Since these typically sell for upwards of 3 to 4 times this amount, I handily placed it in my watch list for revisiting.  By the afternoon of the auction's closing date, there were no bites at all on this camera, and a good part of that was likely due to the listing calling this simply an "IZEISS COMPUR CAMERA."  Thus, it didn't appear in search results for "Zeiss" or "Ikonta."  I figured I was worth an early Christmas present to myself, so I bid, and managed to win it for just over $120,  a decent score considering its value.

This Zeiss was the "premium" version of my other Ikonta cameras in that it had a coupled rangefinder to assist in focusing, thus giving it the "Super" moniker.  Further, it had a Tessar f/3.5 lens that was the high end counterpart to the less sophisticated Novar on my other 6x9 format Ikonta 521/2.

The camera's seller was apparently a widow selling off her husband's camera collection, and offered little description in the way of the functionality of the so there was certainly some risk involved regarding the functionality of this classic Zeiss, and as such, it was being sold strictly "as is" with no guarantee of functionality.  Regardless, it looked to be in excellent shape, so it seemed that if nothing else, it was at least worth what I had paid for it.

The Super Ikonta 531/2 appears quite similar to the 521/2, with the most pronounced difference being the elaborate rangefinder mechanism that the user swings into place after unfolding.  To focus, the user looks through the porthole in the back of the camera, seen below, then composes the image using the Albada style flip up finder.