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…
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…
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…
This is a Futura S, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Futura Kamerawerk GmbH in Freiburg, West Germany starting in 1952. The Futura S was a later variant of the original Futura camera, first released in 1950. All Futura cameras featured a unique screw/breech lock interchangeable lens mount, a leaf…
This is a KMZ Iskra, a folding medium format camera that shoots 6cm x 6cm images on 120 format roll film. The Iskra is a copy of the AGFA Super Isolette first introduced in 1954, and was made by KMZ (Krasnogorsky Mekhanichesky Zavod), just outside of Moscow starting in 1960. …
This is a Leica Model A, made by Ernst Leitz GmbH of Wetzlar, Germany. The serial number of this particular camera means it was made in 1930, but the earliest Model As were first introduced in 1925. The Leica Model A is one of the most historically significant cameras ever…
This is a Hasselblad XPan, a 35mm rangefinder camera that exposes 24mm x 65mm panoramic images on regular 35mm film. The Xpan was made in Japan and was a name variant of the Fujifilm TX-1. The Xpan was an extremely expensive and high quality camera with a focal plane shutter,…
This is a FED 2, a 35mm rangefinder camera made at the F. E. Dzerzhinsky Labour Commune in Kharkiv, Ukraine during the reign of the Soviet Union between the years 1955 and 1970. The FED 2 was an upgrade to the original FED camera which itself was a copy of…
This is a Mercury II Model CX half-frame 35mm camera made by the Universal Camera Company out of New York, NY. The Mercury II was an update to the original Mercury Model CC that added support for normal 35mm film rather than the proprietary Univex film used in the original. …
This is a Tenax II, an interchangeable lens 35mm rangefinder camera made by Zeiss-Ikon in Dresden starting in 1938. It shot 24mm x 24mm square images on regular 35mm film and was created by famed designer Hubert Nerwin who previously designed the Contax rangefinder. It was an unusually designed camera…
This is the Contarex, a professional grade 35mm SLR camera produced by Zeiss-Ikon starting in 1960. This first generation Contarex earned the nickname “Bullseye” for the large prominent circular exposure meter above the lens. The Contarex was one of the first West German SLRs with a focal plane shutter, and…
Another Halloween, another Cameras of the Dead article. This year, as I browsed through my ever growing collection of broken cameras, I started to see a pattern. While sure, I have my fair share of broken Japanese, American, and Soviet cameras, but I’m starting to see more and more European…
