This is a Mamiya Sketch, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Mamiya Optical Co., Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan in 1959. The Sketch was the first ever Japanese camera to shoot 24mm x 24mm images on regular 35mm film, a format that would never gain popularity among Japanese photographers. The Sketch…
I love hearing from readers of this site and am happy to answer questions about articles I’ve written, but I don’t actually repair cameras myself and won’t be able to give you any meaningful assistance in getting yours repaired. In addition, if you contact me asking me to recommend someone…
I am not a news site. I don’t want to be a news site. In order to deliver news effectively, it must be done timely, giving people what they want as soon as they want it. With the posts on this site often taking weeks, months, and even sometimes years…
This is a Minolta-ER, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera produced by Chiyoda Kogaku Seiko K.K. in 1962. The Minolta-ER was a milestone camera as it was the first Minolta SLR with automatic exposure and was also the company’s first and only leaf shutter SLR. It offered shutter priority automatic…
This is an Almaz (Алмаз) 103, a 35mm single lens reflex camera made by Leningradskoe Optiko Mechanichesckoe Objedinenie, or LOMO for short, between the years 1979 and 1986 in the former Soviet city of Leningrad. There were a total of four models in the Almaz family, but only the 103…
This is an Ensign Selfix 820 Special, a medium format folding camera produced by Barnet Ensign Ross Ltd in London, England starting in 1953. The Selfix 620 Special was a higher end model in a long running line of Selfix folding cameras produced both before and after the war. When…
This is a Zeiss-Ikon Icarex 35 CS, a 35mm single lens reflex camera produced by Zeiss-Ikon in Braunschweig, West Germany starting in 1968. The Icarex series was originally developed in the early 1960s by Voigtländer as the Bessaflex prior to that company’s merger with Zeiss-Ikon in 1965. When the camera…
This is a Paxette IIM, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Carl Braun Nürnberg, in Nuremberg, West Germany between the years 1953 and 1955. The Paxette IIM was one in a large family of Paxette cameras, dating back to the original Paxette from 1950. Differentiating between the different Paxette models…
This is a Fujifilm GA645Wi Professional, an advanced medium format point and shoot camera made in Japan by Fuji starting in 1997. The GA645Wi was an updated version of the original GS645W, first introduced in 1983, featuring a 45mm wide angle lens, but adding almost every modern convenience such as…
This is a Kodak Colorsnap 35 Model 2, a 35mm scale focus viewfinder camera made in London, England by Kodak Ltd. London between 1964 and 1967. It was a refreshed version of the original Kodak Colorsnap 35 which started production in 1959. Both Colorsnap cameras were created by the British…
This is a Super Kodak Six-20, a medium format folding camera made by Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY in 1938. The Super Kodak Six-20 is historically significant for a variety of reasons, most importantly, it was the first mass produced camera with automatic exposure. The camera was created by famed…
A couple of weeks ago, this site celebrated it’s 8th anniversary since I started writing camera reviews, and like the passage of the entire year, I can’t believe how fast the time has flown. As has been the case for every year since I’ve been keeping track, 2022 was a…
