Found this little miniature marvel at the collector’s sale at Killinkoski Camera Museum (highly recommended, if you ever visit Virrat, Finland).
Not the modern digital variety, but the original point-and-shoot PEN: a 1968 or so Olympus PEN EE-2 28mm f/3.5 half-frame camera. Seems to be working, down to the weird selenium exposure meter (the transparent ring around the lens).
Recently I had the pleasure to add a new camera to my Miranda collection: a very tidy and fully working Miranda Sensorex C (serial number 933772, circa 1970 model).
For the sake of creating an impressive picture I fitted it with a 90-230mm f/4.5 Soligor T4-mount zoom lens, and an original Miranda accessory rubber eye cup. The standard factory-issue 50mm f/1.8 lens is beside the Sensorex.
One of the most distinctive features of the Miranda SLR cameras was the interchangeable viewfinder system. Some other camera companies have also used a similar system on some of their models (notably Nikon F, Canon F-1 and some Topcon models, and of course Ihagee Exakta), but Miranda was the first Japanese make, and the only make to use this feature across their whole SLR range, from the first Miranda/Orion T in 1955 to the last 1976 Sensorex EE-2. Also, Miranda had another first: it was the first Japanese production SLR to have a pentaprism viewfinder at all.
I’ll introduce here the different Miranda viewfinder versions I have. Let’s start with the standard pentaprism viewfinder which was factory fitted to almost every model.
The optional VF1 waist-level finder (this is the one my father used on his Miranda Fv).
The optional critical focuser VF3. 5x magnification when opened, 15x when folded down.
The pentaprism with a built-in Through-The-Lens (TTL, hence the “T”) CdS exposure meter. Originally used in the GT and FvT models, but can be retrofitted to any model, except the Automex/Sensorex range.
The standard pentaprism viewfinder of a Sensorex C. The Automex/Sensorex range had their own range of viewfinders; the mounting is superficially similar, but the dimensions differ.
Also, there exists some Miranda viewfinder models I don’t currently have: there are for example an another critical focuser model VF4, and an earlier version of the metering prism used in the FM model, which isn’t a TTL but has a metering eye on the upper front corner of the prism.
I’d like to share here a tip I got from a fellow mirandacollectors group member.
With age and use, the metal push-on lens caps on Miranda and some Soligor lenses wear out and loosen to the extent that they drop off by itself. Here’s one cure for the problem:
Last spring I took a roll of test pictures on Dad’s old 1955 Yashicaflex C, which had been last used in the late ’60s, and collecting dust on a bookshelf ever since. Regardless of its neglected state it behaved very well; here are some samples of the resulting pictures. The film used was 120 type Fujifilm 400.
An unintentional double-exposure seems to be an integral part of the learning-to-use-a-fully-manual-camera-process… The steamer “Tarjanne” (Please see the Flickr page for a better picture of it) and the memorial of the steamer “Kuru” disaster in 1929, combined in one picture:
A cherub and a swan in front of the Finlayson Palace:
Toijala market place and church:
