Tianjin
The Tianjin Camera Factory was a camera factory in China. The factory was founded in the late 1950s[1][2] The factory's first camera, perhaps the first new camera made in post-revolutionary China, was the July First (Qiyi), a folding camera copied from a Mamiya Six. Only 40 examples were made.
Tianjin's Chenguang SLR is a simplified copy of the Russian Start. The Eastar cameras may have been the company's only top-sellers with a production of some tens of thousands.
It is not clear when the factory stopped working. The Easter S2 was (apparently) made until about 1990.
Cameras
- July First; roll-film folder
- Xing Fu, copy of the Altissa Box
- Xing Fu-2
- Eastar TLR
- Eastar S2 35mm rangefinder
- Chenguang
- Lanjian Saomiao She Ying Yi 950 SM, panoramic camera for large roll film
Notes
- ↑ Flickr member Jun Peng states the factory was founded in 1958, by eight existing workshops which up to then made wooden cameras; in this discussion about the Easter TLR camera
- ↑ Collector Wang Guosheng stated in an article in People's Daily that the July First was made in 1956, in which case the factory must have been in existence by then: An antique camera collector in Tianjin at People's Daily Online.
