LIKA Rangefinder -anyone ever heard of it?

Post war given the inch markings, and presumably Japanese. The camera looks very much like a oversized 6x4.5 RF folder, and these are a camera type restricted to war time and post war Japan.

It is hard to tell what it is - not everything on that camera needs to be original. And LIKA might be misleading, as it could be the rangefinder rather than camera brand - in that time frame, many Japanese makers used third party rangefinders with separate branding, and some cameras were even aftermarket modified with coupled rangefinders.
 
Looks to me like it is a heavily modified unknown brand camera. Maybe someone wanted to play with spare parts..
 
sevo said:
Post war given the inch markings, and presumably Japanese. The camera looks very much like a oversized 6x4.5 RF folder, and these are a camera type restricted to war time and post war Japan.

It is hard to tell what it is - not everything on that camera needs to be original. And LIKA might be misleading, as it could be the rangefinder rather than camera brand - in that time frame, many Japanese makers used third party rangefinders with separate branding, and some cameras were even aftermarket modified with coupled rangefinders.
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Good points.
Yet, all war- and post-war Japanese folders I have are much thinner in construction and follow a series of set design principles. This thing is just "massive" in terms of aluminium thickness and dimensions. Not something that would have been done in post war Japan (given the cost of raw materials involved). Also, apart from the the whimsical name play (which does fit with the odd habit of many Japanese folders of the era) it somehow does not feel like a Japanese design. It's almost over engineered. The mechanics are very well executed, juts all a bit too 'industrial'.
The rangegefinder looks part of the design and not retrofitted etc
 
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heritagefutures said:
Good points.
Yet, all war- and post-war Japanese folders I have are much thinner in construction and follow a series of set design principles. This thing is just "massive" in terms of aluminium thickness and dimensions. Not something that would have been done in post war Japan (given the cost of raw materials involved).
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All Japanese 6x4.5's I had were quite massive - none had aluminium shells, though. Post-war German and Italian makers tried to make everything from aluminium as their aircraft industry had left them with plenty of hard aluminium and associated tools while they had a brass shortage - I haven't observed a similar excess of aluminium from post-war Japan (or any other non-European origin), and where they use aluminium it mostly is soft compared to the German alloys, so the material might point to a European maker. If so, Italy would be my prime suspect - Italy and Germany then had the highest number of obscure micro brands, and a Italian one I haven't heard of is more likely than any German ones, given that I've hung around German photo fairs for thirty years running...

But origin/maker and marketer/brand need not be the same. If it should a US brand, it could be made anywhere or even in several different places (Graflex for example marketed quite a few cameras stitched together from Japanese, German and US parts).
 
Given that the Mamiya Six already is a brute of a camera, it is bizarrely oversized. It almost looks as if it was built by a maker who had never seen a regular size 120 camera except in print - which might place it either very early or very far off the map. Or it might be a special purpose device, maybe a recording camera semi-integrated into something bigger, as that odd transport lever looks as if it was fit to some other piece of machinery rather than to human hands.

Or, of course, a home-made camera - it was bought in Britain, right? The British had a protectionist period post-war where outrageous import taxes made goods from anywhere except the Commonwealth almost inaccessible, during which it was common for amateurs to build or modify their own cameras - some photo rags of the time even had DIY camera construction pages. There is a strange discrepancy between the coarse case and industry made rail assembly which looks strongly as if the latter had been transplanted from another camera, and the odd focal length is best explained by a bigger format camera as the parts source as well.
 
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sevo said:
Given that the Mamiya Six already is a brute of a camera, it is bizarrely oversized.
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It does in deed. I made some notes on the way the camera handled when I shot that test roll.

sevo said:
Or it might be a special purpose device, maybe a recording camera semi-integrated into something bigger, as that odd transport lever looks as if it was fit to some other piece of machinery rather than to human hands.
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I somehow doubt that bit.



sevo said:
Or, of course, a home-made camera - it was bought in Britain, right? The British had a protectionist period post-war where outrageous import taxes made goods from anywhere except the Commonwealth almost inaccessible, during which it was common for amateurs to build or modify their own cameras - some photo rags of the time even had DIY camera construction pages. There is a strange discrepancy between the coarse case and industry made rail assembly which looks strongly as if the latter had been transplanted from another camera, and the odd focal length is best explained by a bigger format camera as the parts source as well.
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Yes, the body looks quite coarse, but with the exception of the range finder fit at the left, is actually well built. And most of the elements are well tooled. So if it was a self-made DIY job, then it is well done indeed. But if someone went to tat trouble. they would have modified the shutter release to make it more suitable for them. Whereas if it was a prototype / design study then that may not necessarily have been required.
Your suggestion to look at the British DIY stuff is a rally good one though and I'll be going through UK mags next time I am in the National Library
 
sevo said:
There is not much Petzval about that, other than it being a four lens design - the rear group is entirely different. It looks more like a reversed Protar.
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Sevo, when I look at the Protar lens schematics, they look very different:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89864432@N00/1657167656

Yes, the rear group is not airspaced and in a Petzal, still... but I would be keen to find out which lens is actually in that camera. The diagram I posted was measured and drawn as much as I was able to
 
heritagefutures said:
Sevo, when I look at the Protar lens schematics, they look very different:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89864432@N00/1657167656
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Actually, they look very much the same - the Protar is a concave/convex, concave/convex double achromat arrangement, yours is convex/concave, convex/concave. I.e. the same basic layout, but with the rear facing outward - the Petzval is quite different, convex/concave, concave, convex.
 
Yes, I see, but the front group internal side is flat and the rear internal side is marginally convex ... and the Protar both internals are concave

The sequence is
Subject side of lens: Double convex cemented to plano-concave
Film-side of lens: Double convex joined (uncemented) with convexo-concave
 
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