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This is a Pentina M, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera originally made by VEB Kamera-Und Kinowerke Dresden, and then later by VEB Pentacon Dresden between the years 1963 and 1965.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…
This is a Sony Mavica MVC-FD88, a 1.3 Megapixel digital camera that first went on sale in June 1999. The MVC-FD88 was part of Sony’s long running Digital Mavica series and stored it’s images on 3.5 inch floppy disks. At the time of it’s release, the FD88 model had the…
One of the appealing things about collecting cameras is discovering the huge variety of brands, styles, and variants that have existed over the past 100+ years. No matter what size negative you wish to shoot, whether you want something fully automatic or completely manual, if you’re left or right handed,…
It doesn’t take long to be a camera collector to have come across one of those oval gold foil PASSED stickers on many Japanese optical products. While it was common practice by many original owners of Japanese camera or lens owners to remove this sticker, many still remain in various…
This is an Aires Radar-Eye, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Aires Camera Ind. Co., LTD in 1960. The Radar-Eye would be the the most advanced rangefinder camera produced by Aires, and also it’s last. Built on the same platform as the previous Aires 35 IIIC, the Radar-Eye added a…
My current digital camera is a Fujifilm X-T20 and when I am out shooting, I can change the simulated ISO setting as high as 12,800 in standard mode and 51,200 in “extended” mode meaning that no matter how slow of a lens I mount to it, I can shoot the…
This is a KW Praktiflex, a 35mm SLR camera built by Kamera-Werkstätten AG in Dresden-Niedersedlitz, (East) Germany between the years of 1939 and 1949. The Praktiflex was originally designed by Alois Hoheisel and was the first new camera built by KW after ownership of the company was transferred to Charles…
Mike Novak is a Fort Dodge based photographer, camera collector, and film enthusiast who lives in Fort Dodge, Iowa. For the past several months, Mike attended several town hall events for a number of candidates prior to the Iowa Caucus and brought with him a selection of film cameras, vintage lenses,…
The Eastman Kodak Company’s daylight loading 35mm film cassette made it’s debut in 1934. With the release of the first Retina camera, Kodak’s type 135 film format took the world by storm and within a few short years was the dominant format of easy to load 35mm film for miniature…
This is a Bell & Howell Autoload 342, a compact camera made by Canon of Japan that used Kodak’s type 126 Instamatic film cassettes. The Autoload 342 had an innovative Focus-matic system that used a delta rangefinder that worked using a moving ball bearing that would trap the focus distance…
