Ricoh XR Solar

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The XR-Solar should not be confused with the earlier Ricoh XR-S.

The XR Solar is an SLR for 35mm film offered by Ricoh. It seems to have been manufactured by Cosina who offered their own version of it, the E1 Solar; and it was also sold by Foto-Quelle as the Revue Solar 100. The Ricoh manual linked below shows a date of 1994.

Unlike the earlier Ricoh XR-S, the XR Solar does not offer autoexposure. The mechanical, vertically-traveling Copal shutter (used in numerous Cosina-built SLRs, and even the Voigtländer Bessa range) offers a top speed of 1/2000 sec and flash sync at 1/125th. The solar cells merely need to charge up a small capacitor, after which manual meter readings can be made with a momentary half-press of the shutter release. This causes + / O / – symbols to appear in a viewfinder LCD.

Links

• Ricoh XR Solar manual from Mike Butkus' OrphanCameras.com
• XR Solar profiled at Classic Cameras & Photography

Under Revue branding image by Alf Sigaro (Image rights)