The Voigtländer Vito II was introduced in 1950 as successor of Voigtländer's prewar model Vito, a folding camera for 35mm film. Unlike the earlier model, it could only take modern type No. 135 film, and not alternately 35mm film on simple rolls. Its film transport was optimized for the modern film capsules. The camera got a new lens which was calculated for color photography, Voigtländer's Color-Skopar 1:3.5/50mm. Late in 1950 the release bar was replaced by a release button, although bar releases were shown on cameras advertised as late as 1954 and British advertisements in 1953 describe the button release as "new". In 1951 a fixed take-up spool was fitted and a pop-up rewind knob introduced. By 1954 an accessory shoe had been added. The focal range is 3' to infinity and the shutter Type on this camera is a Prontor-SV. The shutter speeds are T, B, 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 300 and the original price was about $39 or £23.

Reasonably robust despite being a bellows camera. Back in the 70\80es, my daughter used one from when she was below 10 up into her early teens. Good traing for estimating light and setting estimated distance and if it was lost or wrecked it would not be at great cost to her father.

I imagined that the shutter assembly would be more exposed than if inside like in the Vito B series, but it still works. Nowadays it keeps company with my Vitessa on a shelf, since various newer optical and progressively complicated electromechanical wonders replaced it. In the digital age an equally compact auto-everything accompanies my daughter.

Results from analog VitoII v\s contemporary digital larger-sensor compact with zoom? Not much difference in results for everyday use, but very much cheaper to run than film devices and far better than phonesnaps.