Baby Lyra

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unknown
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The Baby Lyra (ベビーライラ) is a Japanese 3×4 folder that was made by Fuji Kōgaku between 1936 and 1938[1]. It is a vertical folding camera, with a folding frame finder, inspired by the Baby Ikonta. The advance knob is at the bottom right. The back is hinged to the left and contains two uncovered red windows to control film advance. The front leather is simply embossed LYRA and the back leather has the FUJI KOGAKU logo.

The shutter is a Picco with T, B, 25, 50, 100 speeds, probably everset. The aperture scale is at the bottom of the shutter plate and the Picco name is at the top. There is no body release and the lens is front-cell focusing.

Advertisements dated December 1936[2], September 1937[3] and September 1938[4] list three variants of the Baby Lyra:

  • Pionar or Pioner[5] f/6.3 lens (¥25 in 1936 and 1937, ¥28 in 1938);
  • Terionar f:4.5 lens (¥32 in 1936 and 1937, ¥36 in 1938);
  • Terionar f:3.5 lens (¥42 in 1936 and 1937, ¥46 in 1938).

The focal length is certainly 50mm in all three cases.

Notes

  1. Dates of the advertisements mentioned by Kokusan kamera no rekishi, p. 342.
  2. Advertisement by the distributor Yamamoto Shashinki-ten published in the December 13, 1936 issue of Sunday Mainichi, reproduced in the Gochamaze website.
  3. Advertisement published in Asahi Camera, reproduced in Kokusan kamera no rekishi in two parts, p. 100.
  4. Advertisement published in Asahi Camera.
  5. Inferred from the katakana パイオナー. An example with 50mm f/6.3 lens is presented in this page at Asacame but the name is not legible enough. The lens names are only mentioned in the September 1937 advertisement cited above, not in the ones dated December 1936 and September 1938, but we can probably assume that they were unchanged.

Bibliography

  • 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. Item 291. (See also the advertisement for item 164.)
  • Omoide no supuringu-kamera-ten (思い出のスプリングカメラ展, Exhibition of beloved self-erecting cameras). Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 1992. (Exhibition catalogue, no ISBN number.) P.&snbp;15.

Links

In Japanese: