The original or the clone?

[belgiumreporter]

We all know that throughout the camera history there has been the "originals" cameras that have set the standard. Think of leica, hasselblad, exacta, rollei to name just a few makers that had a vision wich translated in cameras that let us photographers, photograph the way we do today. For every great "original" there has been a lot of clones, one sometimes a bit better than the other, but seldom better than the original. I've just aquired this yashica mat 124 wich is often proposed as a cheap but worthy alternative for a rollei twin lens reflex, so i've put them next to each other. I don't know if it shows in the picture but in real life it is obvious the rollei is in another leage than the yashica, you really get what you pay for, question is if you want to spend about 10 times more for that bit of originality, or if you can life happy in the knowledge that the clone will do the job for you just fine?

Anyway, i've started this thread in the hope you camera enthousiast would look in your collection to see if you've got the original and the clone and show us a picture of them standing next to another.

By the way the yashica seems to be an intermediate model between the mat 124 and the mat 124G i can't find much info about it as all i can find is either about the mat 124 or the G. This one has a black body, the baffled inside and the slideable pressure plate of the G but the chrome lightmeter of the mat 124. I'm not willing to open the camera just to check if it's got the gold contacts (could it be that in early G models the G wasn't put on the camera?)

[belgiumreporter]

Okay, here's another one, maybe not that Obvious, but it wasn't a big secret that Olympus had a good look at leica when they designed their cameras.



PS. i haven't got the half frame leica to compare to the oly  (a bit expensive) so the M4 will have to do

[Stephen]

In the case of the Pen though, even Leica were agreed it was unique in design, as they studied it very completely after the '63 Photokina where the camera was first shown.

The internals were entirely the work of the brilliant designer Maitani Yoshihisa, and only Bering complained that the shutter resembled the Robot, but were rebutted by the patents Maitani Yoshihisa held on his design. After all, Bering had used a relatively standard movie camera shutter design in the Robot.

Olympus had a rotary design, but few gears, and it was made of titanium, and was the first in so many ways. it ould not have been used as a movie shutter, the design and fine details were so different.

Maitani Yoshihisa was a great fan of Leica and the external look was totally deliberate in design to attract Leica users to the product. even the shutter release was made to feel like a Leica release.

The clever arrangement of the Porrofinder to do away with a pentaprism was well known, but only previously used on two designs, and Maitani Yoshihisa got his ideas from roof prisms used in binoculars and periscopes.

His one mistake was to assume that Leica users would flock to the single framed camera,(we call it half frame now), and use their existing lenses on adapters. Trouble is photographers and the shops were too conservative and failed to realise the concept as a system camera. Adaptors proved expensive to make due to licensing patents, and gave purely manual operation. Shops in the UK sold the cameras, but the lenses wee expensive and adaptors unavailable.

It was a brave attempt to do something new, but failed commercially. In the States, where it cost less, it caught on with the intended Leica users, but in practice they are a minority of photographers and sales were too low to attract further development.

They are a delightful camera to use, but you are let down by the processors who treated half frame as a nuisance. At least Maitani Yoshihisa's design ideas were proven right with the Digital M4/3 Pen series, the adaptors are done, it is a success.

Stephen.