The earliest days of any new technology are always fascinating to me. Not just for the stories, but for the process of how things like photography made the journey from a vision to reality. Rarely is it as simple as some inventor one day waking up from a dream and…
This is a Minolta XD11, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera produced by Minolta of Japan from 1977 to 1984. The XD11 was the first model in Minolta’s new XD series of electronic manual focus cameras. It was the first SLR camera with both aperture and shutter priority auto exposure,…
Ever since the first cameras and first photographic processes were developed in the early 19th century, innovations have continuously come along to improve and simplify the act of making a photo. The first celluloid films in the late 1800s allowed up to 100 images to be shot without having to…
This is a Zorki rangefinder camera, built in the former Soviet Union by Krasnogorsky Mekhanichesky Zavod (KMZ). Although not marketed this way when it was new, this example is known today as the Zorki 1C as it was the original generation Zorki rangefinder, and the third major variant. The Zorki…
This is a Fuji TW-3, a compact 35mm dual lens point and shoot camera that shoots half-frame 18mm x 24mm images on regular 35mm film. The Fuji TW-3 was produced by Fuji in Japan for a short while starting in 1985 and has a curious feature set of separate wide…
This is an Olympus-35 LC, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. from 1967 to 1969. The LC is the predecessor to the very successful Olympus 35 SP, sharing that model’s body and 7-element lens, but without auto exposure or the dual spot/averaging metering system of the…
This is a Purma Special, an all Bakelite snapshot camera produced by Purma Camera, Ltd., England starting in 1937. The Purma Special shoots sixteen 32mm x 32mm images on 127 roll film. It is a simple fixed focus camera with an extremely unique gravity controlled metal blade focal plane three…
Most people understand how lens filters work. Colored filters are used with black and white film to filter out specific wavelengths of the color spectrum to alter the contrast of the image, UV filters filter out ultraviolet light which in some lenses helps to reduce haze (and is also a…
This is a Bronica S2, a medium format single lens reflex camera produced by Zenza Bronica Kogyo from 1965 to 1969. Originally built as a discount option to the Hasselblad medium format SLR, the Bronica S2 was an upgrade to the earlier Bronica S with the most significant change being…
What started out as a one-episode spin-off of the Classic Lenses Podcast, Johnny Sisson and I decided to record a follow-up to the hugely successful Cocaine and Waffles Podcast this week. Like the first episode, we invited a bunch of our camera collector friends into a single “Brady Bunch style”…
Prior to about the mid 1980s when zoom lenses became prevalent, if you were in the market for a new camera, chances are it came with a “standard” or “normal” lens with a focal length of 50mm, or somewhere close to that. In the early days of SLRs, standard lenses…
This is the Argus SLR, a fully mechanical 35mm single lens reflex camera. The Argus SLR was produced for the Argus Corporation of Ann Arbor, Michigan by Mamiya Optical in Tokyo, Japan and was produced from 1962 to 1964. The camera is a variant of the Mamiya Prismat NP which…
