Why Miranda?

Some of you may have been wondering why I’m obsessed with such an obscure and long since vanished camera make like Miranda. Well, there are several reasons, which can be divided in three subcategories:

• Historical reasons:
  My dad bought his Miranda Fv in either late 1966 or early 1967. Many of my childhood memories involves Dad with the Miranda dangling from his neck. He seemed to haul it everywhere he went…
• Ethnical reasons:
  I like Japan as a country, its people, and everything “Made In Japan”. 頑張れ日本!
• Technical reasons:
  I deeply respect the designs of Ogihara-san and Ōtsuka-san, the company founders. The Miranda cameras were well made and durable; they had lots of unconventional – sometimes very so – but very well thought out features. It was a great loss for the camera world when the company folded over in 1977!

I have never been part of “The Mainstream”. Whatever my current hobby is, it seems that everything unconventional, ingenious, non-mainstream, but well working solutions interest me greatly. Some examples: as a younger man I repaired and used old British motorbikes… my favourite was Velocette, a very idiosyncratic make. My all-time-favourite car is the Citroën 2CV (do I need to say more?). I’ve used Linux as my operating system for almost 15 years… The list is endless.