Torca 35 (Neoca?)

[stephenfrank]

My dad was clearing out some old things from storage and sent my way this camera which belonged to him and his grandfather before him.
Naturally I'm trying to find information on this camera but it's pretty scarce. I see it wasn't very popular 😛

Here it is:

It looks identical to this Neoca camera
http://homepage1.nifty.com/fukucame/neoca1s.htm
and very similar to
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fortinbras/675656643/

Of which there seems to be no information either!

Perhaps someone here might have an idea of where this camera is from.

 

[NickTrop]

Nothing on the web (as you probably know) about this particular camera, but the lens says "Neocor", which was the lens on the Neoca. I'm sure that this makes it a Neoca. It was probably for export and there was a conflict with the name "Neoca", or (for some reason) it was determined it would sell more with the name "Torca", or someone thought it sounded to much like Nikon(?), or the distributor didn't like the name...etc. etc. Who knows? In fact, I'd bet the house it's a Neoca 35IS, since it doesn't have a film advance lever. Here's a page of the Neoca 35IS with sample pics:

http://homepage1.nifty.com/fukucame/neoca1s.htm

Here's a Camerapedia article on Neoca "Kaisha" with lots of links:
http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Neoca

 

[NickTrop]

The only other explanation I can offer is that our crafty friends in the FSU in the 50's - while they were banging out Leica and Contax clones under the names Fed, Zorki, and Kiev were also banging out copies of Neoca cameras and naming them "Torca".

 

[stephenfrank]

I don't think the Neoca was well known enough to do knock off models. The conflicting sales name theory sounds about right.
Thanks for taking a look.