This is the Tower 41, a 35mm rangefinder camera built in Japan by Mamiya Optical Co., Ltd. for the Sears Roebuck and Company starting in 1961. The Tower 41 is similar to the earlier Tower 39, also built by Mamiya, but adding a combined coincident image rangefinder and a faster…
Lens coatings are good. If a single coating is good, then multiple coatings must be better. This concludes the extent of my knowledge about lens coatings. I suspect I am not alone as a good number of digital and film photographers and collectors probably have about the same understanding as…
This is a Kodak Instamatic 500, a fully manual, but high end Instamatic camera built in Stuttgart, Germany by Kodak AG between the years 1963 to 1965. The Instamatic 500 was one of Kodak’s few Instamatic cameras built in Germany, by the same German division responsible for their premium Retina…
There was once a time where every year there was at least one big photo show where camera and lens makers would set up elaborate booths and roll out their latest and greatest new products, showing them off to dealers and the general public evoking an early form of “pre-internet-GAS”. …
This is a Samsung SR4000, a 35mm single lens reflex camera made by Samsung in South Korea from 1997 to 2001. The SR4000 is the North American name of the Korea only Samsung Kenox GX-1. It was Samsung’s first and only 35mm SLR, which they produced during the short period…
This is a Welta Weltini II, a 35mm folding rangefinder camera made by Welta Kamerawerke in Freital, Germany between the years 1938 and 1941. The Weltini II is similar to the Weltini I with a different top plate and cosmetics but is otherwise the same. Both cameras were rangefinder equipped…
This is a Canon Dial 35-2, a compact scale focus camera made by Canon of Japan which shoots 18mm x 24mm half frame images on regular 35mm film. The Canon Dial has not only a very unique body with a shutter priority automatic exposure metering system shaped like a rotary…
There have been many firsts in the history of photography. First photographic process, first use of film, first box camera, first SLR, first digital camera, etc. Of all those firsts, in 1888, a new camera made it’s debut that was the first of it’s kind, first to use a new…
This is a Petri Penta, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera made in Japan by Kuribayashi Shashin Kōgyō K.K. starting in September 1959. The Penta was Kuribayashi’s first 35mm SLR as they had been producing a line of scale focus and rangefinder cameras for about ten years prior. The Penta…
Although cameras are (usually) complicated devices with many different parts, in it’s simplest form, a camera can be broken down into two major components, the first, is a light tight box, and the second is the lens, which focuses an image onto a film plane or digital sensor. When you…
This is a Contax RTS III, a semi-professional 35mm SLR camera produced by Kyocera of Japan starting in 1990. The Contax name was licensed to Yashica in 1973, at which time a series of well equipped camera bodies using the Contax name were sold. The original Contax RTS first debuted…
I still remember my first digital camera. It was a Toshiba PDR-M25, a 2.2 megapixel monstrosity that captured 1720×1200 pixel images on a SmartMedia flash card. I was the first person in my family to have a digital camera, and upon showing it off at family functions, no one cared…
