Oko Semi

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Japanese Semi (4.5×6)
Prewar and wartime models (edit)
folding
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The Oko Semi (オコーセミ or オーコーセミ)[1] is a Japanese 4.5×6 folding camera, made by Ōki Kōgaku Seiki Seisaku-sho and distributed by Sankō Shōkai in 1942.[2]

Sources

The Oko Semi was advertised in the January 1942 issue of Hōdō Shashin, together with the Oko Six.[3] The advertising picture is very small and of bad quality. The only surviving example observed so far is pictured in McKeown.[4]

Description

The Oko Semi is a vertical folder, whose body and struts are copied from the Ikonta A. The advance knob is at the top left, as seen by a photographer holding the camera horizontally. There is a body release on the left and a folding bed release button on the right. The camera has a small housing in the middle of the top plate, containing an eye-level finder and a waist-level brilliant finder. The back is hinged to the left and the film advance is certainly controlled by red windows.

In the advertisement, the shutter is said to give 1–350 speeds and is perhaps called "Precision".[5] The lens is said to be a four-element Tessar-type Okor Anastigmat f/3.5.[6]

The example pictured in the advertisement and the example pictured in McKeown differ by the shape of the finder housing: the advertised camera has an L-shaped housing and the surviving example has a smaller pyramidal-shaped housing, engraved OKO SEMI on the top. The advertised camera has a knob at the right end of the top plate, probably the depth-of-field dial that is announced in the advertising text, which is absent on the surviving example.

Notes

  1. In the only advertisement observed, the name of the camera is written オコーセミ (with a short "O") but the title is オーコーカメラ (Oko cameras, with a long "O").
  2. Date: advertisement listed in Kokusan kamera no rekishi, p. 334.
  3. Advertisement reproduced in Kokusan kamera no rekishi, p. 61.
  4. McKeown, p. 746.
  5. The shutter name is written プレジョン (purejon) in katakana but this is perhaps a typo for プレシジョン (pureshijon or Precision). The word PRECISION is faintly readable on the shutter plate of the Oko Six pictured in the same advertisement.
  6. Name inferred from the katakana オーコール.

Bibliography