When someone asks the question “What is the ‘best’ 35mm rangefinder ever made?”, a great number of responses will likely include either the Leica M3 or the Nikon SP. The reason for these two models on the tops of so many people’s lists is that they are both very good…
After weeks of audio problems, last night there was a disturbance in the force, and Rock Kenwell and I had this idea to eschew all podcast norms, invite some other like minded people, and record what happens. With no more than 10 minutes of preparation, we picked a time, scheduled…
This is a Royer Savoyflex II, a 35mm SLR made in France by Société Industrielle de Technique Optique, or SITO for short. The Savoyflex had a between the lens Prontor Reflex leaf shutter, a fixed Berthiot 50mm f/2.8 lens, non-removable pentaprism viewfinder, film advance lever, and an rapid return reflex…
It is not unusual when digging into the history of something for it to get a little confusing. Finding the first of something isn’t always cut and dry because early versions of something often are created out of the ashes of something else, or sometimes something completely new is created,…
This is a Kodak Regent, a folding rangefinder roll film camera made in Stuttgart, Germany by Kodak AG starting in 1935. The Regent natively shoots eight 6cm x 9cm images on 620 roll film or with the use of a mask, sixteen 4.5cm x 6cm images. The Regent was a…
This review is part of the Cameras of the Dead series which features dead cameras that I’ve wanted to review that either didn’t work, or was otherwise unable to shoot. This April, I will not be doing my usual “Halfway to Halloween” triple-feature, but didn’t want you to think I…
This is a Yashica T AF, a 35mm fully automatic point and shoot camera made by Kyocera of Japan starting in 1985. The Yashica T was the first in a long running Yashica T-series of cameras that all came with a Carl Zeiss Tessar T* lens. At the time this…
In my quest for cameras to review for this site, I’ll occasionally stumble upon some interesting lenses that I pick up to pair with the film cameras they are designed for, but sometimes I like to see what they can do digitally. There are a huge number of sites filled…
This is the Tower 41, a 35mm rangefinder camera built in Japan by Mamiya Optical Co., Ltd. for the Sears Roebuck and Company starting in 1961. The Tower 41 is similar to the earlier Tower 39, also built by Mamiya, but adding a combined coincident image rangefinder and a faster…
Lens coatings are good. If a single coating is good, then multiple coatings must be better. This concludes the extent of my knowledge about lens coatings. I suspect I am not alone as a good number of digital and film photographers and collectors probably have about the same understanding as…
This is a Kodak Instamatic 500, a fully manual, but high end Instamatic camera built in Stuttgart, Germany by Kodak AG between the years 1963 to 1965. The Instamatic 500 was one of Kodak’s few Instamatic cameras built in Germany, by the same German division responsible for their premium Retina…
There was once a time where every year there was at least one big photo show where camera and lens makers would set up elaborate booths and roll out their latest and greatest new products, showing them off to dealers and the general public evoking an early form of “pre-internet-GAS”. …
