What started out as a one-episode spin-off of the Classic Lenses Podcast, Johnny Sisson and I decided to record a follow-up to the hugely successful Cocaine and Waffles Podcast this week. Like the first episode, we invited a bunch of our camera collector friends into a single “Brady Bunch style”…
Prior to about the mid 1980s when zoom lenses became prevalent, if you were in the market for a new camera, chances are it came with a “standard” or “normal” lens with a focal length of 50mm, or somewhere close to that. In the early days of SLRs, standard lenses…
This is the Argus SLR, a fully mechanical 35mm single lens reflex camera. The Argus SLR was produced for the Argus Corporation of Ann Arbor, Michigan by Mamiya Optical in Tokyo, Japan and was produced from 1962 to 1964. The camera is a variant of the Mamiya Prismat NP which…
When someone asks the question “What is the ‘best’ 35mm rangefinder ever made?”, a great number of responses will likely include either the Leica M3 or the Nikon SP. The reason for these two models on the tops of so many people’s lists is that they are both very good…
After weeks of audio problems, last night there was a disturbance in the force, and Rock Kenwell and I had this idea to eschew all podcast norms, invite some other like minded people, and record what happens. With no more than 10 minutes of preparation, we picked a time, scheduled…
This is a Royer Savoyflex II, a 35mm SLR made in France by Société Industrielle de Technique Optique, or SITO for short. The Savoyflex had a between the lens Prontor Reflex leaf shutter, a fixed Berthiot 50mm f/2.8 lens, non-removable pentaprism viewfinder, film advance lever, and an rapid return reflex…
It is not unusual when digging into the history of something for it to get a little confusing. Finding the first of something isn’t always cut and dry because early versions of something often are created out of the ashes of something else, or sometimes something completely new is created,…
This is a Kodak Regent, a folding rangefinder roll film camera made in Stuttgart, Germany by Kodak AG starting in 1935. The Regent natively shoots eight 6cm x 9cm images on 620 roll film or with the use of a mask, sixteen 4.5cm x 6cm images. The Regent was a…
This review is part of the Cameras of the Dead series which features dead cameras that I’ve wanted to review that either didn’t work, or was otherwise unable to shoot. This April, I will not be doing my usual “Halfway to Halloween” triple-feature, but didn’t want you to think I…
This is a Yashica T AF, a 35mm fully automatic point and shoot camera made by Kyocera of Japan starting in 1985. The Yashica T was the first in a long running Yashica T-series of cameras that all came with a Carl Zeiss Tessar T* lens. At the time this…
In my quest for cameras to review for this site, I’ll occasionally stumble upon some interesting lenses that I pick up to pair with the film cameras they are designed for, but sometimes I like to see what they can do digitally. There are a huge number of sites filled…
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…
