Topcon Uni

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The Topcon Uni 35mm SLR from Tokyo Kogaku released in 1964. It was also sold by Beseler as the Beseler Topcon Auto 100 and Hanimex as the Hanimex Topcon RE Auto.

It's one of the first auto exposure SLR cameras with TTL metering. It is usually bundled with a 53mm f/2 6 element lens which is compatible with the UV lens mount.

It has a Seikosha made shutter with speeds from 1s to 1/500 with B. Flash sync is at 1/60 a sec. It features a needle based TTL center-weighted metering system using a CdS cell. The meter has a range of 5 to 18 EV at (ASA 100), settable to film speeds from 25 to 400 ASA. The shutter speeds in metered shutter priority mode can only use the red shutter indicators down to 1/8 of a sec. It uses a 1.35v mercury battery. The film transport uses a single stroke film advance lever and a rewind crank.

Unlike most later-day SLRs, this camera has a leaf shutter, leading to a more complex exposure sequence: the camera is supposed to look like it is winking at you when a picture is taken. There are three items in the path of the light: the mirror, the shutter, and the aperture blades. When idle, the mirror is down to block the film from exposure (like an auxiliary shutter), and shutter and aperture are wide open. When the shutter release is pressed, the shutter closes, the aperture stops down, and the mirror turns up. Once the mirror has moved, the shutter opens then closes. The mirror falls down back to block the light pathway as both the shutter and aperture return to their open idle positions.



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