What is it? This is a Pouva Start, a simple medium format camera made almost entirely out of Bakelite. It was manufactured by Karl Pouva AG in Frietal, Germany between the years 1952 and 1971. This is the first version of the camera with a popup sports finder and was…
What is it? This is a Ricoh FF-90 Super, an advanced and fully automatic 35mm point and shoot camera made by Ricoh Co., Ltd in 1987 The Super is a slight upgrade to the original FF-90 from two years earlier, and was very popular in it’s home country of Japan…
What is it? This is a Minolta Auto Wide 35mm camera made by Chiyoda Kogaku Seiko K.K. in 1958. It was a scale focus camera that had a unique combination of a wide angle lens, a coupled selenium exposure meter, and a unique click stop focus system to simplify focus and exposure…
This is a Nikon F single lens reflex camera which was made by Nippon Kogaku in Japan from 1959 through 1973. It was Nippon Kogaku’s first attempt in the SLR market and was aimed at the professional photographer. The Nikon F both raised the bar for what a professional camera…
This is a Pentacon FM 35mm SLR made by VEB Zeiss-Ikon Dresden in East Germany between the years of 1958 and 1961. This camera is part of the Contax S series which debuted in 1949 as the first German built SLR camera with a fixed pentaprism viewfinder. It is identical…
What is it? This is a Ricoh 519M 35mm rangefinder made by Riken Optical Industries Co., Ltd, which first went on sale in 1959. It is an evolution of the earlier Ricoh Five-One-Nine which was a very similar camera, except without a built in meter. The Ricoh 500-series cameras were very…
What is it? This is an Ensign Ful-Vue box camera made by Barnet Ensign Ltd. of Walthamstow, England between the years 1946 and 1949. This was the second camera named the Ensign Ful-Vue to be released, the first released in 1939 was a more traditional cube shaped box camera made by…
What is it? This is a Minolta Uniomat III 35mm rangefinder camera made by the Minolta Camera Company between the years 1963 – 1965. It is the third model in Minolta’s Uniomat series which was also sold in the US as the Ansco Anscoset. The Uniomat series is an early example of…
This is a Detrola Model E, a compact roll film camera made by the Detrola Corp out of Detroit, MI starting in 1939. The Detrola Model E shoots 3cm x 4cm images on 127 format roll film. Detrola made a variety of similar models all with different combinations of features,…
What is it? This is a Bencini Koroll II made by Bencini in Milan, Italy starting around 1962. It is a strange medium format camera designed to use 120 roll film, but takes small 30mm x 45mm exposures which are only slightly larger in size than 3cm x 4cm images…
What is it? This is a Foth Derby folding strut camera made in Germany by C.F. Foth & Co. The Foth Derby was in production from 1930 to about 1940 and was designed as a lower cost alternative to Leica and Contax cameras of the time. It was a direct competitor…
What is it? This is a Voigtländer Brillant, a medium format Pseudo-TLR made by Voigtländer of Germany between the years of 1932 and 1937. This is the original variant with an all metal body and non focusing viewfinder. Although aimed at the low end of the market, it was a well…
