This is the first in what will — hopefully — be many posts about the cameras that I have been collecting over the years. Present count today is somewhere around 25 cameras, from the early 20th Century to only months old, both film and digital, SLR, TLR, Rangefinders, Folders and more.
The camera up today is the Olympus Chrome Six III B. It’s a Medium Format Folding camera first introduced in 1948, the revision III (below) was introduced in May 1952. The biggest difference between the earlier II model was the introduction of a ‘film plane corrector’ to improve the precision of the film position. The ‘B’ denotes the fact that it has the faster 75mm ƒ2.8 lens, and not the ƒ3.5.
My Olympus Chrome Six was handed down to me from Jen’s Grandfather. Apparently it was used heavily at all sorts of occasions over the past half a century, but the condition is so near to perfect that you could barely tell. The most distinguishing feature of this particular Chrome Six is the text ‘MADE IN OCCUPIED JAPAN’ that runs down the back latch of the camera. A reasonably common feature on many objects manufactured in Japan during the period between the end of WWII and April 18, 1952.
Personally, my favourite part of this camera is the fast (in the Medium Format world) ƒ2.8 lens. The field of view of the 75mm lens is roughly equivalent to 50mm on a 35mm — or a Full-frame digital — camera, and at full aperture it has quite a narrow depth of field. The quality of the F.C. (coated on all elements) glass is excellent, and in fact the only negative with a camera such as this is the relatively slow 1–200 speed of the Copal shutter. However, leaf shutters do have some advantages over focal plane shutters in that they can flash sync at any available shutter speed, and are generally quieter.
In short, this is a great camera if you’re looking to get started in the world of Medium Format film. It’s cheap, very easy to use, has great optics, and is even thinner (albeit heavier) than most modern-day dSLRs.