Okaya

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Okaya (岡谷光学機械株式会社, Okaya Kōgaku Kikai Kabushiki Kaisha, i.e. Okaya Optical Machinery Co. Ltd) was a Japanese maker of leaf-shutter 35mm cameras (as well as "Vista" brand binoculars) in the 1950s. The brand name it used for the cameras was Lord — a name used earlier by Tokyo Optical.

The earliest Lord 35 is a viewfinder camera; all subsequent Lord cameras have viewfinders. The last models have exposure meters.

Okaya's cameras were distributed within Japan by Hattori Tokei-ten.

Okaya's technical innovations (at least for Japanese cameras) included a rewind button that only needed to be depressed at the start rather than all the way through the film (Lord 35, 1953), a folding rewind crank (Lord 35IVB, 1955), and photocells around the front of the lens and thus under any filter (Lord Martian, 1960).[1]

(Okaya should not be confused with Okada.)

Models

  • Lord 35
  • Lord 35IIA
  • Lord 35IVB
  • Lord 35IVA
  • Black Lord 35
  • Lord 5D
  • Lord 4D
  • Lord SE
  • Lord SL
  • Lord Martian

Note

  1. The Japanese Historical Camera, 2nd ed. (Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2004), pp. 68, 81, and 103 respectively.

Sources and further reading

In English:

  • The Japanese Historical Camera. 2nd ed. Tokyo: JCII Camera Museum, 2004. (In both English and Japanese.)

In Japanese: