Topic: Half Frame Heaven...

[Skorj]

... or 'hafu-saizu' in Japan. I still have slides I took using my first real camera - a Ricoh Auto-Half, or Gatling in some markets (clockwork motor wind), but the pick has to be be the Pen F SLR, with those snappy lenses.

I always wondered why it was viewfinder-less, it was an SLR! Mirror goes sideways, hence no prism housing. How cool is that? Style-wise, the Canon Demi is pretty damn kawaii though.

Maybe Mamiya developed their Pistol with the idea of cornering the US-market? Prices for the Nikon S3M and the Leica 72 start at USD10,000 and USD15,000 each. Heck, that's a lot of Pen kit you could splash out on.

I also wasn't aware the Kyocera Samurai was a half, which kinda explains how it morphed into the APS version. Glorious camera to use, pity the output was crap of the first order.

How many can you recognize?




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[kuru]

Not many, but I do have the bottom two Russian half-frames.

[moominsean]

the camera shaped like a gun would be a fun way to get arrested here in the US.

[Francois]

I didn't know Leica made a half frame camera!
These were not very popular in Canada. The only half frame I ever saw new in the store was a Yashica. It looked like a camcorder and had vertically traveling film (for horizontal pictures).

[formica]

i don't recognize many of them, and the ones i do are only from seeing them on line a few times. the yahsica on that weird mount i thought was a super 8 camera at first. same with that weird gun shaped camera.

          william

[LT]

I used to have a canon demi - it was really frustrating as it took forever to get through a film, and the negs were so small, they really werent worth enlarging to any halfway decent size.  I sold it on Feepay.

[Phil Bebbington]

Shoot, the Olympus Pen was my very first camera I had that took 35mm film. It was about 1974 and my mum came home with it having found it in the street. If it hadn't have been for that camera I may never have gotten into photography. Still had it up until about 10 years ago, I used to carry it around when I was a police officer taking photos of car wrecks and the like.....must dig out those old negs!

[Francois]

I remember, when I bought my Nikon, the camera saleman told me he really wanted a half frame camera. He told me something like: "Just imagine, you pop in a 36 exposure and get 72 or more pictures out of the roll. You can go on vacation with only one or two rolls and have plenty to shoot! You save on film and on luggage!"

For some odd reason, I feel my Nikon probably outlived his half-frame dream

[Janet_P]

I have a robot junior half frame with a fantastic space age auto wind-on winder...

[gary m]

Here is a pretty good list of half frame cams that used 35mm film. http://corsopolaris.net/supercameras/half/halformat1s.html  There are quite a few half frame cameras that shot 127 size film also. I have a Clix-O-Flex that is such an animal.