Innovative cameras unrecognised ?

[jsrockit]

In the modern, digital camera era, the Ricoh GXR system went mostly unrecognized other than by enthusiasts.

You can say this about any Ricoh. 😉

 

[sdotkling]

While it's all very amusing to read everyone argue about "first this" and "first that," I have a nomination for an innovative camera that was so over-the-top over-engineered, ambitious, and out-of-touch with the marketplace that it actually bankrupted one of the the world's largest and most successful camera companies: The Zeiss Ikon Contarex. Enormously expensive, baroque in its complexity, fatally flawed in both concept and execution, it was the nail in the coffin for Zeiss, which now exists only as a brand name for the present Japanese manufacturer. A beauty, isn't she?

 

[agfa100]

How about the Contax AX, where the body/film plane moved to focus so they did not have to change the design of the contax slr lenses to af....
wbill

Here is a youtube link showing how it worked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjgV34PzKTA

 

[mpaniagua]

Guys how can we not have mentioned the Box Brownie - The camera that made photography available to the masses.

I would also credit it for introducing rollfilm but that was introduced by George Eastman in an earlier 1880s ish patent for a brownie design.

Well yeah, but brownies are perhaps one of the most recognised cameras ever made 🙂, at least for old timers or people that like old cameras.

Regards

Marcelo

 

[tunalegs]

Guys how can we not have mentioned the Box Brownie - The camera that made photography available to the masses.

I would also credit it for introducing rollfilm but that was introduced by George Eastman in an earlier 1880s ish patent for a brownie design.

Kodak's original roll film didn't have anything to do with the brownie, it was released with the original Kodak box camera in the 1880s, which was a surprisingly complicated (and therefore relatively expensive) machine.

Two things happened between then and the introduction of the Brownie which made the Brownie possible as a $1 camera. The introduction of celluloid based film (which Eastman did not invent, and was later sued over for patent infringement) and the introduction of a paper backing with numbers printed on it so film could be advanced with a red window (which I believe originated in the Bulls-Eye cameras which Kodak bought up).

Celluloid film and the patent that went with it has quite a story behind it, but I don't know if there was a particular camera that was designed to use it first. If there is, it is certainly an innovative camera that has gone unrecognized.

 

[mooge]

The Polaroid 250 has always struck me as a very innovative and elegant camera-

- folds into a compact (ish) package
- numbered parts and labels to make it easier for the novice to use
- pretty good Zeiss RF/VF with parallax and change in focal length correction
- clip in front case to hold cold clip and manual
- autoexosure that almost always works better than my manual exposures

it's just too bad nobody makes film for them anymore...

 

[Dwig]

The Polaroid 250 has always struck me as a very innovative and elegant camera-
...

There was nothing "innovative" about the 250. It was merely a modest refinement on the preceding series. It married the earlier Model 180's Zeiss RF with a tweaked version of the model 100's shutter and metering system.

It was the Polaroid 100 that could be considered innovative, though even it was merely a classic folder that used a modestly innovative new version of Dr. Land's instant film. The model 100's electronic shutter and exposure system was somewhat bleeding edge, but by the time of the 250 it was becoming somewhat ordinary.

 

[radi(c)al_cam]

Fujica ST701 — first silicon metering instead of CdS, in 1971.

 

[jarski]

more recent unrecognised innovation, just 3-4 yo currently, two Samsung models deserve to be mentioned (perhaps there were others too):
- Samsung Galaxy NX - 20mp, full system camera with Android OS.
- Samsung NX1 - 30mp system camera with many features competition didn't have at the time.

shame to say I totally dismissed both at the time, didn't even bother to look what they could offer. now prices are getting attractive after they became ageing orphans.