This is a Taron Chic, a vertical half frame 35mm scale focus camera made by Taron Company Limited of Tokyo Japan starting in 1961. The Chic shoots 18mm x 24mm “half-frame” exposures on regular 35mm film. Unlike most half frame 35mm cameras, the film transports vertically, rather than horizontally which…
Imagine a 35mm camera with a high quality (Zeiss Tessar) f/3.5 lens, focusing down to 2 feet, a rising and falling lens board and an all-metal self-capping focal-plane shutter, taking special magazines that allow 750 single-frame (3/4 x 1 inch) exposures, and weighing no more than an 8mm movie camera.…
Following up on my post earlier this week for the Yashica Samurai X3.0 35mm half frame camera, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at an article from the April/May 1969 issue of Camera 35 magazine that explores the myth of half frame economy. Excluding half frame…
This is a Yashica Samurai x3.0, a half frame 35mm SLR made by Kyocera of Japan starting in 1988. The Samurai has a unique feature set, being one of the only vertically traveling half frame 35mm SLRs. It was also one of the first of a new genre of “bridge…
This is an Olympus Pen EE-S, a 35mm half frame camera made by Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. between the years of 1962 and 1966. As with all cameras from Olympus’s Pen series, these are compact half frame cameras that shoot 18x24mm “half frame” images on normal 35mm film. The EE…
This is a Fujica Drive, a half-frame 35mm scale focus camera made by Fuji Photo Film Co. starting in 1964. The Drive was a variant of the company’s Fujica Half adding automatic film advance via a mechanical spring wound wheel. Both the Drive and Half cameras had an excellent 5-element…
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…
