For most of the past century, the choice of whether you wanted to shoot photographs in color or black and white has simply been a matter of choosing one film or another, or in the digital era, pressing a button or two to switch back and forth. In the earliest…
This is a Ricoh Hi-Color 35, a 35mm scale focus camera made by Ricoh Co. LTD of Japan starting in 1968. This model was a mid-level variant in a line up of well featured point and shoot cameras with features like a wind up motorized film transport, shutter priority automatic…
You only need to be a camera collector for about five seconds before you discover one of the most frustrating aspects of the hobby. Is it the large number of extinct films that you can no longer get? Is it what do to with all of the “Ever-ready” cases that…
As I’ve done for the past 3 years at the end of April, I release a “Halfway to Halloween” post in my Cameras of the Dead series of 3 cameras that no longer work, but are worthy of mention. Each year, I come up with some cheesy tie in to…
Whether you shoot film or digital, there are certain lenses that appeal to certain people. Some people like myself are more comfortable with wide angle lenses, some prefer portrait lenses like the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 or the Summicron 90mm f/2, and some prefer long telephoto lenses. For those who have…
This is a Bolsey-Flex, a twin lens box camera produced by Ising of West Germany for the Bolsey Corp. of America around 1954. A couple of different cameras were produced for Bolsey, all with the same Bolseyflex name, but they were often made by different companies. This particular model is…
This is the fourth in a series of posts based on personal conversations I’ve had with Mr. Robert Rotoloni, author, Nikon historian, and president of the Nikon Historical Society. If you’d like to know more, I recommend reading parts 2 and 3 as they cover a tremendous amount about Nippon…
This is a Nikon EL2, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera produced by Nippon Kogaku K.K. of Tokyo, Japan in 1977. The Nikon EL2 was a replacement for the earlier Nikkormat EL/ELW from 1972. Like it’s predecessor, the camera featured a Copal Square electronic shutter with aperture priority automatic exposure,…
I started out Keppler’s Vault 54 of Modern’s Top 47 cameras of 1969 by saying photographers love lists, and boy, was I right! That summary of some of the best cameras of the year turned out to be one of my best performing posts of the year, and while I’m…
This is the Comet, an inexpensive mostly plastic camera sold by the Zenith Camera Corp of Chicago Illinois, starting in 1947. The Zenith makes eight 4cm x 6.5cm images on 127 “vest pocket” roll film. Although resembling many very cheaply made, simple cameras that were popular in the late 1940s,…
It’s no secret that in the early 20th century, Zeiss was a name associated with some of the world’s best lenses. With the work done by Paul Rudolph and many other opticians, lenses like the Planar and Tessar in 1896 and 1902 respectively, became two of the most successful and…
This is a Pentina M, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera originally made by VEB Kamera-Und Kinowerke Dresden, and then later by VEB Pentacon Dresden between the years 1963 and 1965. The Pentina was a very unique looking camera with shutter priority automatic exposure, a selenium cell exposure meter, a…
