Tag Archives: Swiss

for the ditherers of last century

Toronto.  Back on May 10, 2019 before we were engulfed in COVID, I did a different post on the Alpa line of cameras. Those 35mm photographers who couldn’t decide whether the rangefinder or SLR style was best, could always have … Continue reading

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one born every minute …

Toronto. … or so Barnum is supposed to have said.  The Bolex was the Leica or Contax of the amateur movie crowd. It was a high end camera made in Switzerland by Paillard. Interestingly, Bolex was originally not a Paillard … Continue reading

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Swiss knives and cameras

Toronto. When the minicam bug took off in the mid 1930s, people traded size for resolution. Companies like Leitz touted the use of enlargers to make large images from the small negatives. And minicams proliferated. The cameras ranged from complex … Continue reading

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Robert Frank dead at 94

Toronto. The Globe on Wednesday this week ran an obit from the NY Times News Service. It announced that the Swiss born NYC photographer had died at 94 at his cottage on Cape Briton, Nova Scotia. Frank is best remembered … Continue reading

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a marvel of Swiss engineering

Toronto. In the early 1960s, my eye-sight in low light situations made my Exakta SLR harder and harder to focus. One of the cameras that caught my eye was the ALPA. Well made by a Swiss company, it has a … Continue reading

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when is a Bolsey not a Bolsey?

Toronto. When it is an Alpa or Bolex, of course! Jaques Bogopolsky was the camera designer for Paillard, a Swiss company  after they bought out his company, BOL SA. Jaques was born in the Ukraine and went by various names … Continue reading

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