Sears TLS

[doubs43]

Today I received a black model Sears TLS camera with 55mm f/1.4 lens. It's a little rough around the edges but the lens is clean and without scratches or fungus. The meter works and all functions seem to be correct. There' was also a nice 135mm f/2.8 JC Penney lens.

A little clean-up and new foam seals will do wonders for this fine camera. The Sears TLS is the same camera as the Ricoh Singlex TLS and, according to another thread here, was made by Cosina. Cosina has made some fine cameras and this is one of them. For less than $30 delivered, I'm pleased.

Walker

[David Silver]

The black Sears TLS is relatively hard to find. Chrome versions are common as dust. For $30 the camera with that nice 55mm lens was a good deal, but you got a great bonus with the JC Penny telephoto. For a brief period, some of those were rebadged Takumars. I haven't paid too much attention to that wild Cosina thread, but you've got me curious now. My understanding was that Cosina didn't start making cameras until early in 1968, but the Ricoh Simplex TLS and the Sear TLS were introduced in 1967! Somebody's confused, and it may be me! Not the first time...

Dave

[vintageslrs]

David

I'm not sure at all.......but is it possible that Cosina started making lenses in the early 60's then moved on to compacts and movie cameras and then in '68 marketed their first SLR. Could they have been producing some for other companies before the sold any under their own name?

Bob

[David Silver]

Hey Bob,

Cosina was founded in 1959, and I believe they made nothing but lenses (not necessarily for cameras) until they opened their Nakano factory in 1968. That was where they made cameras, more lenses, and did a lot of parts outsourcing for other companies. I'm thinking the first camera they made, whether for themselves or anybody else, was the Hi-Lite, a simple M42 mount 35mm single-lens-reflex camera, in 1968. A quick glance might fool anybody into thinking it's extremely similar to the Ricoh Singlex TLS, which was introduced the previous year, but closer scrutiny reveals a lot of differences. The resemblance is there, but they're obviously different cameras. For years I thought the Hi-Lite was something of a rip-off of the Ricoh! But I've never done any deep research into this relationship, and I'd love to know if anybody else has. It's one of those things where I've been so confident in what I thought I knew, I never challenged it, yet now the Cosina thread (which I largely ignored, apparently much to my detriment) has leaked over here and is making me wonder! This is fun!!

Dave

[doubs43]

silver said:

The black Sears TLS is relatively hard to find. Chrome versions are common as dust. For $30 the camera with that nice 55mm lens was a good deal, but you got a great bonus with the JC Penny telephoto. For a brief period, some of those were rebadged Takumars. I haven't paid too much attention to that wild Cosina thread, but you've got me curious now. My understanding was that Cosina didn't start making cameras until early in 1968, but the Ricoh Simplex TLS and the Sear TLS were introduced in 1967! Somebody's confused, and it may be me! Not the first time... Dave

Thanks, Dave. I have a chrome Sears TLS on the way and it should be here next week. The JC Penney lens seems to be well made but I don't think it's quite Takumar quality. It's multi-coated though so it's not terribly old I suppose.

I'm no expert on who made the Ricoh/Sears TLS series and was going strictly by the Cosina thread. The TLS is well-made and it has features I really like. The vertical metal shutter (Copal, I think) is reliable and of the three TLS models I have now, the meters all work. I also like the "pre-fire" of the mirror and aperture when using the self-timer. It helps reduce vibrations, especially with a long lens.

Walker

[Rachel]

My Ricoh Singlex TLS has a cloth shutter. Did some of these have the Copal metal shutter?

[Randy]

Rachel, you may have the first RICOH TLS that was the same as a Nikkorex F made by NIKON but with an M42 Screw Mount instead of the Nikon F Mount. The contract went to COSINA shortly after the introduction. Every TLS I've ever seen has a Copal Shutter., but the RICOH SLX 500 and the RICOH AUTO TLS EE had cloth shutters and were not made by COSINA. There was also a TLS II that was made by COSINA but the shutter speed dial was top mounted and it was a clone of the ARGUS/COSINA STL 1000. Here's a cut and paste that explains why Cosina didn't make cameras under the name COSINA until 1973. The name COSINA didn't exist until 1973. Cosina
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Cosina Co., Ltd. (株式会社コシナ) is a designer and manufacturer of cameras and lenses, and a glassmaker, based in Nakano, Nagano Prefecture, Japan.
Cosina is the successor to Nikō (or "Nikoh"), a company set up as a manufacturer of lenses in 1959. In 1966, it started to manufacture 35mm compact cameras and 8mm cine cameras, in 1968 it started a glassworks, and a year later started the manufactur e of 35mm SLR cameras.
Nikō changed its name to Cosina in 1973. (Cosi was from the Koshi area within Nakano, where the founder came from; Na again from Nakano.) In 1982 it began to manufacture lenses in a variety of SLR mounts. In 1991 it started to produce glass molded aspherical lenses, and in 1996 plastic molded aspherical lenses. It began producing digital cameras in 1997.
At about this time, plans were started to produce wide and ultrawide lenses for the Leica screw mount, and also a basic camera -- similar to a rangefinder camera but without a rangefinder -- for mounting these. Having obtained the rights to the name Voigtländer from Ringfoto in Germany, Cosina sold a 15mm f/4.5 and 25mm f/4 lens (neither of them rangefinder-coupled) and the Bessa L body in 1999, quickly following these up with a wider range, including 12mm f/5.6 lens, then the widest rectilinear lens ever widely available for still photography.
The Voigtländer cameras and lenses have been of great personal interest to Kobayashi Hirofumi 小林博文 (b.1953), the President of Cosina since the death in 1988 of his father (小林文治郎), the founder.
The name Cosina has previously appeared on compact and SLR cameras for 135 film, and it is well known that the company manufactered cameras for Nikon and other companies; for example, the Nikon FE-10 and FM-10 and Olympus OM-2000. A Cosina design, the 1982 Cosina CX-2, was copied by the Russian optical firm LOMO as the popular Lomo LC-A.
The name Cosina now appears (conspicuously) on lenses for various SLR mounts, and less conspicuously on a widening range of cameras and lenses with the Voigtländer brand. Cosina manufactures a Rollei-branded rangefinder camera, and is acknowledged to manufacture (and to have helped design) an Epson digital rangefinder camera as well. Its manufacture of a new Zeiss Ikon line of rangefinder camera and lenses was announced in October 2004, and it is already (April 2005) producing some of these lenses.
Cosina products are distributed in Japan by Kenko.

[Randy]

I just saw on Matt Denton's website that there was also a Ricoh TLS made by MAMIYA/SEKOR. It can be identified by it's Cloth Shutter and some models have an ARGUS/SEKOR lens. He says MAMIYA sold this design to COSINA. A version of this camera was also offered by Willoghby Camera of New York as a submodel with their own name on it. Talk about mass confusion! this COSINA thing is turning into one of the great conspiracies of the 20th Century. I've been sending Bob LINKs constantly for the last 2 days, and he probably has a headache over all this input!

[Rachel]

admin said:

I just saw on Matt Denton's website that there was also a Ricoh TLS made by MAMIYA/SEKOR. It can be identified by it's Cloth Shutter and some models have an ARGUS/SEKOR lens.

Confusion ? You are telling me. A real can of worms My Ricoh came with a Yashica lens but I understand from the seller that it did come with a Ricoh lens originally.

[doubs43]

rachel said:

My Ricoh Singlex TLS has a cloth shutter. Did some of these have the Copal metal shutter?

Hi Rachel, Both of my Ricoh TLS cameras and the Sears TLS have Copal shutters. The two Singlex cameras have minor differences between them. There's over 110,000 difference in their serial numbers so the later one may have been "improved". The placement of the names on the bodies is not the same.

Walker

[Rachel]

I must apologise my Singlex TLS does have a Copal shutter. Can't think why I thought it was a cloth one. Have to get some new spectacles

[David Silver]

Pleeeeeeeeeease do not use Wikipedia as a resource! It is entirely unreliable! The entries are written by any person who stumbles in and thinks they are expert enough to pontificate on any given subject. The Wikipedia web site is the greatest example of the worst thing about the internet..."I saw it on the internet, so it MUST be true!"

Aaaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Wikipedia is NOT a photography site, the entries change at the whim of whoever sees them and disagrees with them, and the contributors rarely cite supporting sources. Heck, they rarely identify themselves! Sure, they have to get it right once in a while, but that's hardly a reason to consider it a reliable source (as Benny Hill said, even a broken clock is right twice a day!), and much of the information is prejudicial or self-serving. Wikipedia is NOT a true encyclopedia, the entries are NOT fact checked, and there is NOT a proper editorial staff. It is a black hole of misinformation, such that once the misinformation gets in there, the "gravity" of ignorance holds onto it until the web surfing public thinks it must be true.

Noooooooooooo!!! Don't go there!!!!!

Now, to correct some of that misinformation in the Wikipedia entry...

The company we now know and love as Cosina was founded by Mr. B. Kobayashi in 1959 as a lens factory and headquartered in Tokyo. Outsourcing opportunities prompted him to expand into other areas and he permanently acquired a second factory (the famous "Nakano factory") in 1968. This was NOT a "successor" to the original factory! It was an acqusition for Kobayashi's expansion. Camera manufacture may have begun prior to this purchase in temporary facilities, but Kobayashi fully committed himself to further camera production with the new factory. I have no idea where the Wikipedia writer got "Nikoh" from because that's the name of a completely unrelated firm that made subminiature cameras. Prior to 1968 Kobayashi's business was simply the Kobayashi optical works and I've never seen another name for it (of course, if I saw one in a Japanese resource somewhere I might not recognize it anyway, but I've never seen "Nikoh" applied to Cosina). Who knows...it wouldn't be the first time two Japanese companies used the same name. Exactly when the company took on the Cosina name, I frankly don't know, but...

...the Cosina product name was definitely being used before 1973. It was boldly marked on the Hi-Lite in 1968, the Hi-Lite DL in 1970, the Hi-lite DLR in 1971, and then the Hi-Lite EC in 1972. The first fixed lens rangefinder 35mm camera they offered under their own name was the Cosina 35 of 1970.

Mr. Hirofumi Kobayashi (not Kobayashi Hirofumi!) was not promoted to president of the company until February of 1989. He was being prepared for the position well prior to his father's passing when Cosina opened a research and development division and gave the younger Kobayashi control of it.

The Wikipedia article seems extremely slanted towards the accomplishments of the younger Kobayashi, as it totally ignores his father's amazing string of acquisitions and bold expansion during an extraordinary twenty year reign. At least three other factories were added after the initial Nakano purchase, eventually producing every conceivable cutting edge photographic gadget you can imagine, along with all those cameras listed in that Cosina thread (what a list, and I think I may add a few more!), and then the research and development division where the son had to (quickly) learn the business.

That's enough for now. My fingers ache.

But pleeeeeeeeeease stay away from Wikipedia!

Dave

[herron]

Mamiya did provide the lenses for the Ricoh camera, but I don't know if they made the camera, or just shared the design with them.

[Randy]

I included the information from Wikipedia as we are compiling all information we find on the web so we can come to an understanding concering Cosina's production of 35mm cameras for not only themselves, but for other name brands as well. Myself, as well as Bob Iozia are smart enough to not believe everything we read on the net. Some of the information is and will be usefull to help us understand the History of COSINA. I myself place pictures and facts about cameras I own on Wikipedia, and know the facts in front of me in my own hands to be true. So not everything found there is bunk.

[milner]

Statistics here shows there are people who seek out and compile information, then weigh the evidence before making their final presentation. Then there are the so-called experts that jump to conclusions before the first group can come forward with their findings so they can put their cheese in the wind. I'll sit back and watch that first group, thankyou.