Last year as part of a mini documentary project we were working on at work for Duncan Fearnley, me and my video guy at work James drove 200 miles (each way) to visit a company called Anglian Willow in Chelmsford.
While on a family holiday in Cornwall in the 1970s, I saw a Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder in a camera shop window. Needless to say, my parents were not persuaded to buy it for me at that time. Since then I have always had a hankering for a Yashica rangefinder but several less than reliable Electro 35’s later, I started looking for an alternative. The alternative turned out to be the Yashica Minister II rangefinder, a predecessor of the Electro 35.
My Canon F1 came to me just after I’d committed to no more cameras. I have about six or seven good cameras working in a rotation and for the most part I’m an SLR shooter, (I have a a Leica M4-P which I’ve yet to fully engage with, it is a very nice ‘thing’ though). It all happened after I’d been chuntering away about wanting a super simple, super sexy, 35mm SLR, that gave me the things that I love about the Leica without without having to compromise on the stuff I like about SLRs in general.
The 1952 Ferrania Condor II rangefinder camera, alongside with some famous and well sought-after postwar productions, is normally considered a Leica copy, although it shows many original features, like the rangefinder patch inside the viewfinder or the rewind lever, that Leica would adopt with the M series only starting from 1954, and other solutions, like the central plane shutter, the loading spool with opening back or a curious but useful articulated rewind lever, that would never be adopted by contemporary or following Leicas.
Pentax made loads of Espio cameras. You can find different versions all over. The 35-70 AF Zoom is one of the bigger, clunkier ones, and it does all kinds of things, like double exposures and a thing where it takes one shot at tele, then zooms out and takes one at 35. All of these …
5 frames with a Pentax Espio 35-70 AF Zoom – By James Cockroft Read More
