Cherry

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The Cherry Portable was a magazine camera for 12 "meishi size" 5.7×8.3cm dry plates, made by Konishi Honten's factory Rokuoh-sha in Tokyo from 1903 to 1907 (Eastman House says it was made by Konishi Honten's factory Kubo). It was kept simple so that even children could be taught how to use it. Of course simplicity helped to keep its price as low as 2 Yen. It has its reflecting type viewfinder mounted (or just clipped) on top, a finder of a kind that sometimes was called "Watson finder". Other than popular American box cameras of that time it has its lens in a barrel that's mounted on the front plate. The lens barrel contains the camera's special kind of rotary shutter that needs cocking for instant mode (see well illustrated Japanese link). The shutter is placed in front of the Goerz Choroskop 1:13.5 or a similar lens. With dimensions of only 12.5×12.1×7.2cm it is a quite small magazine camera. Another version looks more like common box cameras, having two inbuilt reflecting type finders and the lens hidden behind a round aperture selector slice (like Conley's Kewpie box cameras). Both types keep its special plate holders in place being hooked on the T-profile where they stand on. The Cherries have a very simple falling plate mechanism to let used plates fall onto a stack.

Two European miniature falling plate magazine cameras of 1900, W. Butcher's Little Nipper and R. Hüttig's Gnom were the model after which the Cherry Portable was created. It was badged with the English name "Cherry" in latin letters. Thus it was perhaps the first industrially manufactured Japanese camera which should be exported to other countries or their colonies.

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