tunalegs
Pretended Artist
The Argus C3 may have been the best selling American made RF, but it wasn't the cheapest. In 1949 the Camera Corp. of America - makers of the Perfex range of cameras introduced a new fixed lens, leaf shutter RF - the Cee-Ay 35. The camera was only in production for a few months before the tooling was sold to Ciro of Ohio - makers of the Ciro-Flex TLR. Shortly after, the camera reappeared under the Ciro label as the Ciro 35. At $39 it was the cheapest RF camera in the U.S. - unfortunately its troubled production history kept it from being a real sales success. The Ciro 35 is not particularly rare, but far fewer were made compared to the contemporary Argus and Bolsey designs. In roughly six years of production, only around 40,000 Ciro 35 cameras made it out of the factory. Production was moved from Chicago, to Delaware Ohio, then to Rochester, New York which must have kept production numbers from reaching what they could have been.
The Ciro 35 features Wollensak lenses and Shutters and die-cast body. It is very crude mechanically, but in the cleverest ways. For instance, rather than having a helical for focusing, the lens barrel has a diagonal slot which a pin connected to an external focusing lever engages - moving the lever up or down causes the pin to push the lens barrel in or out of the camera body. No complicated precision machining of a helical was necessary. Like the Perfex cameras, the Ciro also features a hot shoe - a modern rarity in the 1950s.
The Wollensak triplet is adequately sharp, although hardly impressive. A big threat to sharpness with this cameras is the Alphax shutter which has a very harsh release "break away" when tripped - the camera requires a careful grip and a light shutter finger to accomplish sharp images.
Here is one of the machines:
It takes its place in history as America's cheaper RF camera, and the only 35mm camera to be produced by three different companies in succession - Camera Corp., Ciro, and Graflex. If you like simple, no frills photography, the Ciro 35 is about as basic as it gets before you hit the snap-shot camera category.
The Ciro 35 features Wollensak lenses and Shutters and die-cast body. It is very crude mechanically, but in the cleverest ways. For instance, rather than having a helical for focusing, the lens barrel has a diagonal slot which a pin connected to an external focusing lever engages - moving the lever up or down causes the pin to push the lens barrel in or out of the camera body. No complicated precision machining of a helical was necessary. Like the Perfex cameras, the Ciro also features a hot shoe - a modern rarity in the 1950s.
The Wollensak triplet is adequately sharp, although hardly impressive. A big threat to sharpness with this cameras is the Alphax shutter which has a very harsh release "break away" when tripped - the camera requires a careful grip and a light shutter finger to accomplish sharp images.
Here is one of the machines:
It takes its place in history as America's cheaper RF camera, and the only 35mm camera to be produced by three different companies in succession - Camera Corp., Ciro, and Graflex. If you like simple, no frills photography, the Ciro 35 is about as basic as it gets before you hit the snap-shot camera category.
farlymac
PF McFarland
Thanks for the revue, tuna. I'll have to add one of these to my American Collection. Good example photos too, especially the Packard.
PF
PF