Samocaflex 35

Last week I wrote about the Praktica MTL5 – a pretty standard entry level SLR from the early 80’s. This week I’m winding the clock back further and have had a play with a Samocaflex 35, dating from 1955. It’s a 35mm TLR which is rare but not unique. I know of at least one other, the Agfa Flexilette 35, but that’s another story! Unlike the Flexilette the Samocaflex also has a viewfinder. The camera features a 50mm f2.8 lens, a Seikosha-Rapid shutter in a configuration that will be familiar to anyone who has used a Zeiss Ikon for example. Shutter speeds are the usual 500th down through 1 sec to B. This camera sadly had a sticky shutter. If I sat clicking it, all was fine, but if left for more than a few minutes it needed a few clicks to get going again. However what I found was something I’ve never found before in that the slower speeds were fine and it was anything above 30th that gave the trouble! In the image above you can see a small lever that cocks the shutter as the film is wound on. It literally moves the lever to the left as one would do with a finger on say a Zeiss. When it went into sticky mode, this meant I could fire multiple times on the same frame to get it going again without wasting too much film! I would also mean on a fully working camera double exposure for creativity would be easy!

In the above image of the top of the camera on the left is the wind on, obviously in the direction of the arrow, rewind clutch, and shutter release. In the centre is the waist lever finder. Although this is the main selling point, I found that it’s size made it almost unusable to me! It made no difference whether I used my glasses or not. Luckily it had the regular finder (visible in the top photo to the top right of the camera) this is what I used most of the time. I did make the effort to make use of WLF “special feature” for the sake of it!

The other side of the top of the camera is the viewfinder and a Leica M3 style rewind knob, the type I don’t like. The bottom of the camera holds two turn catches of the “open-close” type and combined with a lever (so the camera will stand up-right on a table), this holds in place/lets slide completely off, the back of the camera. Loading the film is standard 35mm practice.

Across the bottom of the back is clearly displayed “Made in Japan”. Apart from the sticky shutter, the almost un-usable WLF, I also found that the aperture selector was all to easy to move position so that I would need to re-check every exposure, it had always moved. Bit of a pain, to my age group who have long expected an f stop to stay where it’s set unless changed! I also found that holding the camera in the usual way for vertical images, my hand fouled the shutter release on the lens. To add to the woes – the rewind clutch release also seemed flaky, to the point the inevitable happened and I broke the film trying to rewind it. Not a problem, I easy sorted that with the dark bag at home, just a hassle!

All in all it’s an interesting camera, I’m sure if I owned one I’d get used to it with more use, however this one was borrowed for the day and frankly I was happy return it! It would seem that these fetch in the region of £900 on Ebay – yes you read correctly!

You may have noticed the serial number of this one starts with 55, and the general consensus seems to suggest that this indicates the year of manufacture. It would also indicate that as little as 3000 of these were made in the main batch. Subtle changes suggest that three batches were made until 1956 when a Samocaflex 35 II was announced. An advert for the version II appeared in 1957 and was apparently the last mention of the camera for regular sale, it seems a short lived run. I guess this reasonably limited number accounts for the price.

For anyone who has ever used a Rollei (6X6) or the equivalent, you will be familiar with the idea of a close up lens and a second one to cover the viewing lens, such a pair was available for this too – I failed to mention closest focus is 3 feet without. This and a lightmeter, also bore the Samoca name.

Verdict: Interesting camera with an interesting history, vastly overpriced maybe due to it’s seemingly limited run. Happy to hand back!