Vivitar Hmmmm??? Which Vivitar....
Vivitar Hmmmm??? Which Vivitar....
Vivitar was always a branding and marketing company. All equipment sold by them was made by other manufacturer.
For instance all the Vivitar Series lenses had a fairly good reputation. However, the reputation was tarnished a bit when you took into consideration that there were from 8 to 12 different lens manufacturers, plus in the different focal lengths supplying lenses with Vivitar Series One branding.
Some of the best were Kiron, who produced great lenses in their own name, plus more very good lenses for Vivitar.
So, who made the toy camera with which you are besmirching Vivitar (or perhaps NOT besmirchiing... can't tell) as a toy camera producer. They actually sold some excellent SLR cameras, made of course by companies who made such cameras.
I know on the Vivitar lenses, you can tell who manufactured the lens with the first two digits of the serial number. This gives people a leg up on assessing quality on Vivitar product, or perhaps understanding why a certain Vivitar lens is a POS.
For instance the SN table for Vivitar Series 1 70X210 made in the 70's was:
The 1st two digits (or first one digit, in the case of 6 or 9) designate the manufacturer:
6 Olympus
9 Cosina
13 Schneider Optik
22 Kino Precision (Kiron)
25 Ozone Optical
28 Komine Co. Ltd
32 Makinon
33 Asanuma (Tokina) 37 Tokina
42 Bauer
44 Perkin Elmer (US)
47 Chinon
51 Tokyo Trading
56 Kyoe Schoji
75 Hoya Optical
81 Polar
The next three digits designate the year and week of manufacture. One digit for the year and two digits (01 through 52) for the week. Obviously, designating the year with a single digit doesn't allow you to differentiate between, say, 1978 and 1988, so you have to infer the decade of manufacture from other evidence (such as when, where and how you acquired the lens, what documentation came with it and the physical appearance of the lens).
The remaining digits indicate the manufacturing serial number.
A SN starting with 22 (Kiron) usually denoted a good example.
Now, again, who made your toy camera for vivitar?
