What is it? This is a Baby Brownie Special made by the Eastman Kodak Corporation between the years of 1939 and 1952. This model was an upgrade from the simpler Baby Brownie by adding a fixed telescopic viewfinder an integrated shutter release button, and a cloth carrying handle. Later models…
I am proud to announce “Keppler’s Vault”, a new series of posts dedicated to articles published in the 1950s and 60s in Modern Photography magazine. The name Keppler refers to none only than Herbert Keppler (April 21, 1925 – January 4, 2008), long time photographer, journalist, consultant, and editorial director…
What is it? This is a Minolta Hi-Matic E 35mm rangefinder camera made by Minolta Camera Co. starting in 1971. It was one of the last quality Minolta rangefinder cameras with fast sub f/2 lenses before the line was replaced with cheap point and shoot models that were manufactured by third…
What is it? This is an Olympus XA2 scale focus point and shoot 35mm camera made by Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. between the years of 1980 and 1986. It was a simpler and less expensive version of the Olympus XA camera released a year earlier. The entire XA series was very…
This is an Agat 18K half-frame 35mm camera made by BelOMO in their Vilejka factory near Minsk, Belarus between the years of 1988 and 1991. The Agat 18K was an updated model of the earlier Agat 18 offering an improved shutter, a new film speed scale, and a revised lens…
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, if you were a photographer, you probably heard of a small Japanese company called the Miranda Camera Corporation. Even if you didn’t own a Miranda camera, you probably remember their ads. Miranda originally started in 1946 as Orion Seiki Sangyō Y.K., (in English, Orion Precision…
This is the Topcon RE Super 35mm SLR made by Tokyo Kogaku of Japan between the years of 1963 and 1972. It was a historically significant camera as it was the very first 35mm SLR camera to offer through the lens (TTL) metering. The RE Super was a large and…
For those of you like me who grew up in the 1980s, you remember the Polaroid instant camera. Models like the Spectra and the OneStep were common, shooting instant photographs with Polaroid’s familiar white border. If you are a little older, you might remember the collapsible SX-70, but no matter…
This is a Nikon S2, a 35mm rangefinder made by Nippon Kogaku of Tokyo, Japan. The S2 was a significant upgrade to the original Nikon S rangefinder from 1948 and was made between the years 1955 and 1957 when it was replaced by the Nikon SP. By the time the…
What is it? This is a Kodak Retina Ib – Type 018 camera built by Kodak AG, the German subsidiary of the Eastman Kodak Company between the years of 1954 and 1957. It was the successor to the earlier Retina Ia – Type 015 and was sold simultaneously with the Retinas…
What is it? This is a Photavit IV 35mm camera made by Photavit-Werk GmbH in Nuremberg, Germany starting in 1947. The Photavit IV shoots 24mm x 24mm square images on regular 35mm film stock, but it requires the use of proprietary Photavit film cassettes to maintain it’s extremely small size. Before the…
What is it? This is a Kodak Vollenda 48, a folding camera that shoots 3cm x 4cm images on 127 film. It was originally made by Nagel Kamera-Werke and later by Kodak AG in Stuttgart, Germany between the years of 1929 and 1937. The Vollenda was one of Dr. August…
