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Adrian
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 07, 2006 - 03:44 am: | 
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I have just been given one of the above. It is "classic" only in the sense that it hasn't died yet. As far as I can tell it is a single shutter speed fixed focus 35mm beastie with what appears to be a mock selenium meter on the front, and a glazed panel round the lens that is obviously an attempt to ape the Olympus Trip. It does, however, have an enormous viewfinder!
Google is not my friend here - I've got nothing helpful! Can anybody tell me more about this oddity? In the meantime I shall run a film through and see just how terrible it really is!
Adrian |
Adrian Gray
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 07, 2006 - 10:50 am: |
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Bizarrely, a Google image search has thrown up something a bit more helpful - I have a description of its strange modus operandi from Sylvain Hagland's site,
http://www.collection-appareils.com/appareils/html/yamato_palmat.php
(Babelfish is your friend...)
and it is NOT a mock selenium cell, but attached to its own strange system.
Mine is missing the plastic shutter lever, but otherwise appears to be all there and the shutter fires at what the Mk1 eyeball says is a sensible speed. I'd be very interested to see what McKeowns says about it, and of course can anyone else add more than Sylvain?
Adrian |
Winfried
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 07, 2006 - 02:45 pm: |
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AFAIK this was the last camera model manufactured by Yamato of Japan. They introduced the Pax cameras in the 1950s, a miniature Leica "copy" with fixed lens and coupled rangefinder (and a flimsy spring-controlled shutter). The first model had just the Pax designator, later models were the M2 (gear-controlled shutter, single eyepiece), M3 (bright frame viewfinder) and M4 (advance lever). The M4 was marketed under a wide variety of names: Rex, Ricsor, Alpina... There was also a downgraded model without rangefinder, the Pax Ruby.
The Palmat seems to be similar to the Pax cameras in body design but has a simple auto-exposure mechanism.
I have read somewhere that the Yamato camera plant was bought by Canon in the early 1960s. |
Adrian
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 10, 2006 - 07:31 am: |
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Thanks Winfried, the Pax seem to be reasonably well thought of for what they were so I'll have to try to put a film through and see what happens - see if I can see why it was their last model, perhaps?
Would love to know how the green light was meant to work - the behaviour of mine suggests that the senium cell is on its last legs!
Adrian |
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