Licht

The Licht is a Japanese leaf shutter in #00 size, providing 25, 50, 100, B, T speeds and developed in 1935 by the company Seikosha. Some examples are equipped with a regular self-timer activated by a lever, while others have a hole where you can insert a needle attached to a thread, releasing the shutter when it is pulled.

Variants and cameras equipped (incomplete list, and not all variants are concerned):

• "needle self-timer":
  • Kinsi by Riken
• lever self-timer:
  • Gelto I (by Takahashi)
  • Minion I and II by Tōkyō Kōgaku
  • Baby Semi First (by Kuribayashi)
  • Kraft
• no self-timer visible:
  • Zessan by Riken
• unknown variant:
  • Semi Prux by Proud

Bibliography

• Kamera no mekanizumu sono I: "Hai! Chīzu" Shunkan o torae-tsuzukeru shattā-ten (カメラのメカニズム・そのⅠ・「ハイ！チーズ」瞬間をとらえ続けるシャッター展, Camera mechanism, part 1 "Cheese!" Exhibition of instant taking shutters). Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2002. (Exhibition catalogue, no ISBN number)

Links

• Page about early Japanese shutters at the JCII Camera Museum website, this page presents the exhibition whose catalogue is listed in the Bibliography section
• Needle self-timer device at Nekosan's website