Aires 35 IIIL ad in LIFE
Toronto. … to borrow a line from a local radio station. Aires cameras were made in Tokyo, Japan. The Aires Camera Industries Company lasted less than a decade (1952 – 1960). While short lived, the company rode the wave of Japanese cameras crashing on the shores of the Western world routing most of the competing non-Japanese manufacturers.
This ad, tucked away on page 108, in the June 17, 1957 issue of LIFE magazine touted the modest little 35mm camera made by Aires Camera and imported by Kalimar Inc in St Louis Missouri for North American consumption. The Kalimar company imported and rebranded many photographic products. At the end of 1999 it was bought by Tiffen of Tiffen Filters fame.
I remember admiring Aires cameras around the time I purchased my Minolta Super A and being pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Asian cameras (complete with their instruction books written in a strange language a bit similar to English :-).
Thanks to fellow PHSC member George Dunbar (once an IBM photographer) for sharing the Aires ad in Life magazine…
