Takane

Takane Kōgaku (高嶺光学, Takane Optical), was from 1953 to 1958 the maker of several folding roll-film cameras, most models of which had an integrated range/viewfinder and unit focusing and were sold as the Mine Six. The final model, the Super 66, was remarkable as the first Japanese folder to have a coupled exposure meter.

The manufacturer that became Takane was started by Mr Izawa (井沢広治) in 1952, in suburban Takasaki (north from Tokyo), and more precisely in the garden of his father, a farmer. (The resulting company would remain in the Takasaki area until its demise.) Izawa's factory produced components for other companies, among which was Mihama Seikō (三浜精工; very soon to be Suruga Seiki, 駿河精機), for whose Mihama Six it produced the body.

In 1953, Izawa determined to make his own camera. He obtained a loan from Daidō bank (now the Gunma Bank), created a company that he gratefully named Daidō Seikō (大同精工, Daidō precision engineering) and, using the body first designed for the Mihama Six, he produced two folding viewfinder cameras, the Daido Six and Semi.

A change of company name to Takane Kōgaku soon followed, with a new camera, the Sisley 55, which added a (non-coupled) rangefinder to the Daido Six.

The Sisley 55 was a solid camera, but not a remarkable one. Izawa realized that he needed a better product, which in turn would require specialist knowhow. He employed a new head of production, Machida Nobuyoshi (町田信義), and also had the good fortune to attract the attention of a well-heeled elderly enthusiast, the aristocratic local photographer Sakurai Ihei (桜井伊兵衛), who in turn encouraged Izawa to employ as designer Takamatsu Kingo (高松金吾), who had worked at Konishiroku during the war and was now a teacher of engineering in Takasaki and whose handmade TLR had impressed Sakurai. Takamatsu designed the first Mine Six, whose main innovation was unit focussing (i.e. focussing by movement of the entire lens assembly, and not merely the frontmost element).

[More coming soon.]

Personal names above are in the Japanese order: surname first.

Models

• Daido Six
• Daido Semi
• Sisley 55
• Mine Six
• Mine Six IIF
• Mine Six IIFb
• Mine Six IIIS/IIISB
• Mine Six Super 66

Source / further reading

• Hagiya Takeshi (萩谷剛). "Gunma-ken Takasaki-shi no kameramēkā" (群馬県高崎市のカメラメーカー, A camera-maker in Takasaki, Gunma). Chapter 7 of Zunō kamera tanjō: Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari (ズノーカメラ誕生：戦後国産カメラ10物語, The birth of the Zunow camera: Ten stories of postwar Japanese camera makers). Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1999. ISBN 4-257-12023-1 In Japanese only. First published in issue 27 (December 1993) of Kamera rebyū: Kurashikku kamera senka (カメラレビュー・クラシックカメラ専科), this history of Takane is based on Hagiya's interviews with four people who had been key figures in the company.