Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The Japanese Handmade Camera Club : The league of extraordinary ladies and gentlemen


 I first heard about the Japanese Handmade Camera Club from a newsletter of Photographic History Society of Canada (PHSC).


This club is based at Tokyo and the members are accomplished camera makers who have fabricated extremely unusual and  novel cameras. In one of my earlier posts I've mentioned cameras made by Kensuke Hijikata of "Kentax" fame. Mr. Kensuke is one notable members of this club.



Mr. Sam Isamu Mabuchi of Japan Handmade Camera Club  compiled data on 53 cameras which were part of the exhibit at Tokyo and made it available as a slide show at   PHSC's website. There  were  so many handmade  panoramics, large formats, 6x9s and other novel cameras. I strongly recommend that you have a look at them. 



You can access the slide show  of these 53 cameras HERE

Later on, I found a video of the same camera club where members displaying and discussing their cameras. Note the panoramics specially. 





For the camera at 2:04 in the video, that tall, white, lighthouse shaped camera is a rotational panoramic made from a Pentax Auto 110  by Hijikata Kensuke. A report on that camera was published in Popular Photography many years ago. I wish to write about it and some other Japanese handmade cameras once I'm through with the copyrights.






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