Cameras made in Japan
This is a Mamiya 6 Model V, a medium format roll film folding camera, produced by Mamiya Optical Co., Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan between the years 1953 and 1955. The Mamiya 6 series dates back to 1940 and received continual updates throughout it’s life, this model being the first with…
This is a Konica F, a 35mm SLR produced by Konishiroku Photo Industries, Ltd in Tokyo, Japan in 1960. The Konica F was the very first 35mm Konica SLR and was a very ambitious camera with features never before seen on another 35mm SLR before. It was intended to compete…
This is an Olympus FTL, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera produced by Olympus Optical Company of Japan in 1971. The FTL was Olympus’s first full frame 35mm SLR and was released a year before the Olympus OM-1. Unlike the later OM-series, the FTL uses a 42mm screw mount with…
This is Toko Tone, a subminiature camera made by Tōyō Kōki Seisakusho in Tokyo, Japan starting in 1948. The Toko Tone is part of a class of cameras often called “Midget” cameras, named after a simpler model called the Misuzu Shōkai originally released in 1937. All “Midget” style cameras use…
This is an Ansco / GAF Memo II Automatic, a 35mm half frame camera produced by Ricoh in 1964 for Ansco of Binghamton, New York. The Memo II Automatic is a name variant of the Ricoh Auto Half which had been in production since 1963, and is also an updated…
This is a Freedom Zoom 105i, a 35mm point and shoot camera, made by Minolta starting in 1990. The same exact camera was also sold overseas as the Minolta Riva Zoom 105i but otherwise the cameras are identical. Featuring a unique shape that sorta resembles a cross between an alarm…
This is a Minolta X-700, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera made by Minolta of Japan between the years 1981 and 1999. It was the last advanced manual focus Minolta SLR before the auto focus area and had a large number of features including both Aperture Priority and Programmed Auto…
This is an Olympus-35 SP, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Olympus Optical Co. Ltd., in Tokyo, Japan, between the years 1969 and 1976. When it was released, the 35 SP was one of the most advanced 35mm rangefinder cameras ever built, with features such as dual spot and average…
This is a Rokuoh-sha Pearlette, a compact folding camera in the “Vest Pocket” style, made by Rokuoh-sha which was part of Konishiroku, predecessor of Konica. It was built in Yodobashi, Tokyo, Japan between the years 1925 to about 1947. The Pearlette has an all metal body and folds using double…
This is a Nikon E2Ns, a digital SLR produced in joint cooperation between Nikon and Fuji in 1996. The E2Ns is an update to the earlier E2 and E2S models from 1995 expanding the available ISO speeds and improving the camera’s speed. All E2 models shared the same 2/3 inch…
This is a Mamiya Sketch, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by Mamiya Optical Co., Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan in 1959. The Sketch was the first ever Japanese camera to shoot 24mm x 24mm images on regular 35mm film, a format that would never gain popularity among Japanese photographers. The Sketch…
This is a Minolta-ER, a 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera produced by Chiyoda Kogaku Seiko K.K. in 1962. The Minolta-ER was a milestone camera as it was the first Minolta SLR with automatic exposure and was also the company’s first and only leaf shutter SLR. It offered shutter priority automatic…
