Cameras made in Japan
This is a Melcon II, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Meguro Kōgaku Kōgyō in Tokyo Japan starting in 1957. The Melcon II was the follow up to the original Melcon camera, both of which were close copies of the Nikon S and S2 rangefinders. Unlike many copies of successful…
This is a Contax RX, a manual focus 35mm Single Lens Reflex made by Kyocera of Japan starting in 1994. The Contax RX was a very expensive and advanced SLR with a long list of features which catered to semi-professional and enthusiast photographers. It used the C/Y lens mount shared…
This is a Canon Pellix QL, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera made in Japan by Canon starting in 1966. It was an update to the original Pellix from 1965, adding Canon’s Quick Load film system and a sync port for an optional exposure booster. The Canon Pellix gets it’s…
This is a Takane Mine Six Super 66, a folding rangefinder camera made by Takane Kogaku K.K. in 1957. The Mine Six Super 66 shoots 6cm x 6cm or 4.5cm x 6cm images on 120 roll film and has a coupled coincident image rangefinder, an uncoupled selenium exposure meter, and…
This is a Yashica Electro 35 CC, a compact 35mm rangefinder camera made by Yashica of Japan from 1970 to at least 1975. Despite sharing a similar name to Yashica’s popular Electro 35 series, this camera has a much smaller body with several important upgrades from those larger cameras. The…
This is a Super Deluxe 1.7 rangefinder camera, produced by Mamiya Optical Co. starting in 1964. The Mamiya Super Deluxe was a premium 35mm rangefinder and was Mamiya’s first camera to feature a CdS exposure meter. Although the Super Deluxe has a non-removable lens, there were three versions available of…
This is a Minolta Vectis S-1, one of only two Single Lens Reflex models developed by Minolta for use with the Advanced Photo System (APS) film format. The camera was made in Malaysia starting in 1996 and was a full system camera with a brand new and unique Minolta V…
As a collector and blogger, I spend so much of my time researching and writing about cameras from the early to mid 20th century and digging into old photo magazines looking for interesting articles or advertisements about whatever topic I am working on, that sometimes I tend to forget about…
This is a Konica Z-Up 80RC Limited, a fully automatic “bridge” camera made by Konica of Japan starting in 1989. This camera was the top model in Konica’s long line of Z-Up cameras all featuring zoom lenses in fully featured point and shoot cameras. There were several variants of the…
This is a Petri Color 35, a compact 35mm point and shoot camera made by Petri Camera K.K. starting in 1968. The Petri Color 35 was the first in a series of Petri Color cameras and is the most desirable as it offers full manual control in a compact and…
This is an AGFA Selectronic 3, a 35mm SLR made in Japan by Chinon Industries for AGFA, starting in 1980. The Selectronic 3 was a rebadge of the Chinon CE-4 and shared almost all of that camera’s features, including it’s Pentax K-bayonet lens mount and aperture priority automatic exposure. The…
This is a Canon Original, a 35mm rangefinder camera produced by Seiki Kogaku Kenkyujo in Tokyo, Japan between the years 1935 to 1940. These cameras were the first models made by the company that would eventually become Canon. They are an evolution of an earlier Kwanon prototype that was never…
