Okaya
Okaya (岡谷光学機械株式会社, Okaya Kōgaku Kikai Kabushiki Kaisha, i.e. Okaya Optical Machinery Co. Ltd) was a Japanese maker of leaf-shutter 35mm cameras (as well as "Vista" brand binoculars) in the 1950s. The brand name it used for the cameras was Lord — a name used earlier by Tokyo Optical.
Lord cameras have Okaya Highkol lenses. The earliest Lord 35 is a viewfinder camera; all subsequent Lord cameras have viewfinders. The last models have exposure meters.
Okaya's cameras were distributed within Japan by Hattori Tokei-ten.
Okaya's technical innovations (at least for Japanese cameras) included a rewind button that only needed to be depressed at the start rather than all the way through the film (Lord 35, 1953), a folding rewind crank (Lord 35IVB, 1955), and photocells around the front of the lens and thus under any filter (Lord Martian, 1960).[1]
(Okaya should not be confused with Okada.)
Models
- Lord 35
- Lord 35IIA
- Lord 35IVB
- Lord 35IVA
- Black Lord 35
- Lord 5D
- Lord 4D
- Lord SE
- Lord SL
- Lord Martian
Note
- ↑ The Japanese Historical Camera, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2004), pp. 68, 81, and 103 respectively.
Sources and further reading
In English:
- The Japanese Historical Camera. 2nd ed. Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2004. (In both English and Japanese.)
In Japanese:
- Asahi Camera (アサヒカメラ) editorial staff. Shōwa 10–40nen kōkoku ni miru kokusan kamera no rekishi (昭和10–40年広告にみる国産カメラの歴史, Japanese camera history as seen in advertisements, 1935–1965). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994. ISBN 4-02-330312-7. Items 1043–5, 1822–8.
External links
In Japanese:
- Lord Martian
- On lens numbering; at the foot of a long page at Hibimōkoto
- Lord IVB and Lord 35a at Kan's Room