Ōfuna

Ofuna Optical Instrument Manufacturing Co Ltd (大船光学機械製作所, Ōfuna Kōgaku-Kikai Seisakusho) marketed a total of four cameras after the second world war.

The company originated during the war, when it started as a factory in Kamakura of Tomioka. To the north of Kamakura is the town of Ōfuna that surely gave its name to the company. The factory produced binoculars and other military optics. Tomioka's main factory (in Yukigaya-Ōtsuka, Tokyo) was destroyed by bombing toward the end of the war, and when the war finished Tomioka moved to a western outer suburb of Tokyo. Its Kamakura factory, which had escaped unscathed, raised capital independently and became a separate company.

• Herlight
• Ofunaflex
• Ofuna Six (non-coupled rangefinder)
• Ofuna Six (coupled rangefinder)

Source / further reading

In Japanese:

• Hagiya Takeshi (萩谷剛). "Ōfuna Kōgaku no kamera: Kamera kara kōgaku heiki e" (大船光学のカメラ：カメラから光学兵器へ, The cameras of Ōfuna Kōgaku: From cameras to military optics). Chapter 8 of Zunō kamera tanjō: Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari (ズノーカメラ誕生：戦後国産カメラ10物語, The birth of the Zunow camera: Ten stories of postwar Japanese camera makers). Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1999. ISBN 4-257-12023-1.

Links

• Ofunaflex sample photos
• Ofunaflex specifications in Japanese at Japan Family Camera