Voigtländer is an optical company founded in 1756 by Johann Friedrich Voigtländer in Vienna and thus the oldest name in cameras. It produced the Petzval photographic lens in 1840, and the world's first all-metal daguerrotype camera (Ganzmetallkamera) in 1841, also bringing out plate cameras shortly afterwards. It set up a branch office in Braunschweig in 1849, moving its headquarters there later. The company issued stock in 1898, and a majority of the shares were acquired by Schering in 1925. Vienna (German: Wien [viːn]) is the capital of Austria, and also one of Austrias nine federal states (Bundesland Wien). ... An early daguerreotype, claimed by some to be Abraham Lincoln, although many experts disagree with this claim. ... Map of Germany showing Braunschweig Braunschweig [ˈbraunʃvaik] (English: Brunswick) is a city of 245,500 people (as of December 31, 2004), located in Lower Saxony, Germany. ...

Schering sold its share of the company to the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1956, and Zeiss and Voigtländer integrated in 1965. In 1972 Zeiss/Voigtländer stopped producing cameras, and a year later Zeiss sold Voigtländer to Rollei. On the collapse of Rollei in 1982, Plusfoto took over the name, selling it in 1997 to Ringfoto. Carl Zeiss The Carl Zeiss AG is a German manufacturer of optical systems, industrial measurements and medical devices, located in Oberkochen with important subsidiaries in Aalen and Jena. ...

In the late 1990s, Cosina licensed the rights to use the Voigtländer name, and the names of Voigtländer lenses, for its own products. From 1999 it has used these brands for its lenses and camera bodies with Leica rangefinder thread and bayonet mounts, classic Nikon and Contax rangefinder bayonet mounts, as well as M42 (Praktica/Pentax) thread mount single-lens reflex (SLR) bodies, and lenses for M42, Nikon, and other SLR cameras. In Europe, Ringfoto markets these as well as cheaper film and digital cameras with the Voigtländer name. Cosina (コシナ) is a designer and manufacturer of cameras and lenses, and a glassmaker, based in Nakano, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. ... the Leica I, 1925, 1:3,5 Leica is a camera produced by a German company of the same name. ... A Soviet-made FED-2 rangefinder camera A rangefinder camera is one with a rangefinder that allows the photographer to judge the focusing distance. ... Praktica, the successor of Zeiss Ikon, is mainly a camera brand name from Dresden, (eastern) Germany, long time the worlds largest camera production location. ... PENTAX Corp. ... The single-lens reflex camera, more commonly known by the abbreviation SLR, uses a mirror placed between the lens and the film to project the image seen through the lens to a matte focusing screen. ...