Cameras made in the United States
Here at Mike Eckman dot com, I like to ask the tough questions. Questions other camera review sites are unwilling or unable to answer. One day, while listening to some Kid Rock, drinking Budweiser, eating McDonalds, and shooting off fireworks, I thought to myself, “Gee, what was the best American…
This is a Kodak Ektra, a 35mm rangefinder camera produced by the Eastman Kodak Corporation between the years 1941 and 1948. It was at the time of it’s release, and still is today, the most advanced and feature rich American made 35mm camera ever built. Designed to compete with German…
The year was 1953, the Eastman Kodak company was on a string of successful cameras produced for the US military, from the Kodak 35 (called PH-324), Kodak Ektra, and Kodak Medalist, and the time had come to create yet another quality compact camera up to military specifications. The Kodak Signet…
This is a Bell & Howell Foton, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by the Bell & Howell Company of Chicago, Illinois. It first went on sale in 1948 as a top of the line American built camera, designed to compete with the best of what Germany had to offer. The…
You press the button, we do the rest. There have been a number of brilliant men and women throughout history that have introduced ideas or products into the marketplace that not only revolutionized a product, but rather a way in which things were done. Nikola Tesla, Orville & Wilbur Wright,…
This is the Kodak Tourist, made by the Eastman Kodak Corporation between the years 1948 and 1951. It is a medium format folding camera that shoots 6cm x 9cm images on 620 roll film. Despite it’s humble appearance, the Tourist series was somewhat of an upscale camera, optionally featuring Kodak’s…
This is a Vokar II, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by the Vokar Corporation from Dexter, Michigan between the years of 1947 and 1948. It was a very ambitious American made rangefinder camera that boasted a lot of value for the money, including an entirely Vokar designed lens and shutter…
This is a Perfex Speed Candid, a 35mm rangefinder camera made by the Candid Camera Corporation out of Chicago, Illinois between the years 1938 and 39. It was Candid’s first ever camera, and the first camera to bear the “Perfex” name, which after this model evolved into a semi-successful family…
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.…
This is a Kodak VR35 K14, a 35mm point and shoot camera manufactured in Japan by Chinon Industries for the Eastman Kodak company between the years 1986 – 1989. It was the top of the line in Kodak’s VR35 family which consisted of at least 15 different models ranging from…
This is an ANSCO Automatic Reflex 3.5 twin lens reflex camera, made by ANSCO of Binghamton, NY starting in 1947. It shot 6cm x 6cm images on 120 format roll film and had a feature set that compared favorably to top tier TLRs from Germany. The ANSCO Reflex was an…
This is a Signet 40 rangefinder camera made by the Eastman Kodak Company between the years 1956 and 1959. It was the successor to the earlier Signet 35 retaining it’s excellent triangular coincident image rangefinder, and improving upon it with a redesigned Bakelite and stamped metal body, a more flexible…
