Foca

A collection of Foca products image by Stéphane Pouyllau (Image rights)

The Foca was an ambitious 35mm rangefinder system made by the French firm OPL from just after World War II to the beginning of the 1960s. It was intended to be an equivalent to the Leica or Contax rangefinder systems, that were not readily available and very expensive in France at the time, because of the import restrictions and high customs of the period.

There were two generations of Foca series, the first one with a screw mount and the last one with a bayonet mount, called the Foca Universel, and discussed in another article.

OPL also made other cameras with names containing "Foca", mainly the Focasport and the Focaflex, discussed elsewhere.

Foca PF3 (***) image by cgancedo65 (Image rights)

Foca Standard (*) image by Henry Thomas (Image rights)

Links

There are two really great sites about Foca, of course both are in French:

• Roland Weber's site is great
• Gilles Delahaye's site is just as great
• Foca cameras and docs at Camera collection by Sylvain Halgand
• Lionel's FOCA cameras and accessories overview at 35mm-compact.com

Bibliography

• Princelle, Jean Loup. Foca Historica. Mialet, France: Éditions Cyclope, 1997. ISBN 2-910284-38-6.
• Vial, Bernard. Histoire des appareils français. Période 1940–1960. Paris: Maeght Éditeur, 1980, re-impressed in 1991. ISBN 2-86941-156-1.