The first 5 words of the article below from the February/March 1962 issue of Camera 35 magazine are: The Alpa Reflex is expensive… Talk about the understatement of the year! According to this article, in 1962 an Alpa 6C with 50mm f/1.8 Macro-Switar Apochromat lens retailed for $469. When adjusted…
This is an Ikko Sha Start 35 K-II 35mm camera made by Ikko Sha Co. Ltd. of Japan starting in 1958. It was the second to last model in Ikko Sha’s lineup of inexpensive Bakelite bodied 35mm cameras which started with the original Start from 1950. Although using 35mm film and…
If you’re a frequent reader of this site, I have to imagine that you likely have a passing interest in the history of the stories behind the cameras I write about, after all, it is usually a major part of most posts here. I’ve always been fascinated with history. In…
This is a Zeh Goldi, made by Paul Zeh Kamerawerk in Dresden, Germany starting in 1932. The Goldi was a compact folding camera that made 3cm x 4cm images on 127 roll film. Zeh produced the Goldi for other companies and it was sold under a variety of “white label” and…
This is an ANSCO Automatic Reflex 3.5 twin lens reflex camera, made by ANSCO of Binghamton, NY starting in 1947. It shot 6cm x 6cm images on 120 format roll film and had a feature set that compared favorably to top tier TLRs from Germany. The ANSCO Reflex was an…
This is a Signet 40 rangefinder camera made by the Eastman Kodak Company between the years 1956 and 1959. It was the successor to the earlier Signet 35 retaining it’s excellent triangular coincident image rangefinder, and improving upon it with a redesigned Bakelite and stamped metal body, a more flexible…
This is a Kodak Bantam Special, made by the Eastman Kodak Corporation in Rochester, NY between the years 1936 and 1948. The camera was the top of the line in Kodak’s Bantam series which used 828 roll film and made 28mm x 40mm exposures which were 30% larger than standard…
This is a Robot Junior (sometimes incorrectly called the Star Junior or Junior Star) made by the Robot Berning Company in Düsseldorf, Germany starting in 1954. The Junior was an economy version of the Robot Star released two years earlier which lacked a 90 degree right angle viewfinder, and rewind mechanism,…
GAS… Or for those of you non-collector types out there, “Gear Acquisition Syndrome”, is something that doesn’t just apply to camera collectors, but any group of people who drool over ‘gear’ and want to acquire it. The concept of GAS certainly isn’t new as trade shows, magazines, fan clubs, and…
For as long as people have been on this planet, we have been looking at the skies, and for as long as people have had access to cameras, we have been trying to take photographs of it. Every year there is some celestial event such as the recent Perseid Meteor…
This is a Super Paxette II BL 35mm rangefinder camera made by Carl Braun Kamera-Werke of Nuremburg, Germany starting in 1958. This was one of the last, and most advanced in Braun’s successful line of Paxette cameras dating back to the original Paxette I from 1950. This model has an…
Growing up in the 1980s, the View-Master stereo viewer with it’s iconic red plastic shell and round paper discs were a common sight for me and pretty much everyone I knew. Pre-loaded discs with 3D images were available of everything from far away cities to scenes from Star Wars movies. …
