mike eckman dot com

…Nikon was originally formed in 1917 as Nippon Kogaku K.K. or Japanese Optical Company in English.  Nikon’s earliest years were devoted almost exclusively to developing products for the Japanese military.  Their first consumer goods were not released until after WWII, and the company did not officially drop the Nippon Kogaku name until 1988.

…Designed by famed Olympus designer Maitani Yoshihisa the Olympus XA2 is a camera whose reputation precedes itself.  This is a very well known and very highly regarded camera for a reason.  Perhaps the best characteristic of the camera is that it offers some of the simplicity of a 1980s point and shoot camera, in a very small package, with an excellent lens and meter, but with the control and speed of a manual focus camera.  The entire XA series are highly sought after by collectors and photographers alike for good reason.

…the Bell & Howell Foton was the company’s first attempt at a still camera, and was aimed at the professional photographer.  It’s signature feature was a mechanical wind up film advance that could fire the shutter as fast as 4 exposures per second.  It came with a top of the line Cooke Amotal 50mm f/2 lens made by Taylor, Taylor, & Hobson of England and when it first went on sale in 1948, it had a retail price of $700 making it one of the most expensive cameras ever made.

…the View-Master Personal Stereo Camera was a purpose built camera by Sawyer’s that show 13mm x 17mm stereo pairs, intended to be mounted in circular View-Master reels.  Instead of buying premade reels from the store, you could make your own with this camera…

…many cameras made over the last century cross over between multiple companies.  The Anscomark M was an interchangeable lens 35mm rangefinder sold and marketed by the American company ANSCO, but was built by the Japanese company Riken, in exchange for photocopier technology owned by ANSCO’s German parent company, GAF.  The resulting camera turned out to be one of the most distinctive looking cameras ever!

…the Vitessa was an innovative medium priced rangefinder with a folding bellows design with barn doors to conceal the lens and shutter when not in use.  Consistent with Voigtländer’s habit of not following established norms, the camera had a number of unique features such as a rear thumb wheel focus and a large metal plunger that both advanced the film and set the shutter before each exposure…

…Olympus re-introduced half frame 35mm cameras with the original Pen in 1959.  This started a huge trend of half frame cameras released by almost every manufacturer in the 1960s.  Despite the competition, Olympus topped them all with their Olympus Pen F SLR.  The smaller size of the exposed image meant the camera could have a sideways mirror and pentaprism inside of the body decreasing the overall size, while still maintaining all of the benefits of an SLR.

…the AFGA Flexilette was one of a small number of 35mm Twin Lens Reflex cameras that had a separate viewing lens for the viewfinder and one for taking the picture.  The advantage was an extremely quiet shutter sound and lack of any sort of viewfinder blackout when the shutter was open…

…the Kodak Retina was developed by a man named Dr. August Nagel after the Eastman Kodak Company purchased Nagel’s own Nagel Camera-Werke company in 1931.  Nagel was one of the most successful German camera designers of the time, previously working for Zeiss-Ikon and Contessa-Nettel.  The Retina was the world’s first camera designed for Kodak’s then new format of 35mm ‘miniature’ film.

…the Eastman Kodak Company was one of the most influential photographic companies of all time.  Pioneering the earliest forms of photographic film, they introduced the world to a dizzying array of inexpensive folding and box cameras like this No. 3A Folding Brownie from 1909.  Despite their vast number of cameras, Kodak was always a film first camera, selling new models as a means to get more people to buy film.

…first released in 1933, the Voigtländer Superb was the company’s entry into the medium format Twin Lens Reflex market.  Designed to compete with Franke & Heidecke’s successful Rolleiflex line, the Superb offered a number of unique innovations such as automatic parallax correction, horizontal film transport, and a bottom mounted focus control arm.

…the Asahiflex was the first Japanese SLR and was the predecessor to the Pentax.  Featuring a fixed waist level viewfinder and interchangeable M37 lens mount, the Asahiflex was a well built and capable camera that opened the door to later Japanese SLR dominance…

…the Robot series of cameras by the Robot Berning Company remain one of the most highly sought after and unique cameras ever made.  Offering an extremely compact, but high quality body that shoots 24mm x 24mm square photos on regular 35mm film, all Robots featured a motorized clockwork film advance, a rotary shutter, interchangeable lens mount, and a series of high quality lenses, making them very interesting cameras to both collect and shoot.

…the Contessa 35 was one of the last cameras Zeiss-Ikon produced that was created by Hubert Nerwin.  It was the Zeiss-Ikon equivalent to the Kodak Retina, supporting nearly the same features, in an equally well made and compact folding body with an excellent lens and shutter.

…at one point in time, the Miranda Sensorex was seen as a viable low cost option to pro cameras like the Nikon F and Topcon RE Super.  Although it shared a similar feature set, and an available selection of excellent lenses, quality control proved to be the company’s undoing.  The Sensorex was in production for nearly 6 years and was one of the company’s biggest successes prior to their failure.

…the Universal Mercury series was a very innovative and distinct line of cameras produced by the Universal Camera Corp of New York between 1938 and the early 1950s.  It featured a rotary shutter that had a top speed of 1/1000.  It had an interchangeable lens mount and a hot shoe making for a compelling low cost option for the professional photographer on a budget…

…the Kodak Ektra was Kodak’s answer to a disruption of professional 35mm cameras from Germany at the start of WWII.  It was a top of the line camera with innovative features like an adjustable varifocal viewfinder, interchangeable film backs, and a lens selection made up of the best that the Eastman Kodak Corporation could offer.  It sold for $300 back in 1941 and remains a popular collector’s item today.