01THESIS

A 35mm camera machined from optical glass

A mechanical single-lens reflex, made between 1974 and 1979. The gear train times the shutter and your hand decides the exposure; the only battery in it runs the meter. Cast here in optical glass, so the housing stops hiding the mechanism it was built to protect.

02TEARDOWN

It was built to be opened

Six groups, each one a service unit. Lift the top deck and it comes away in one piece; the finder drops out behind it, and the transport leaves on its own crate.

03TOP DECK

Find the dial without looking

Sixteen parts sit above the film plane: wind lever, speed dial, rewind crank, release, shoe. The knurl counts differ on purpose. Twenty-eight cuts on the rewind knob, thirty-six on the shutter dial, and after a week your thumb stops needing your eyes. It is cheap to machine and expensive to add later, which is presumably why nobody bothers now.

04FINDER

Where the image turns the right way up

The mirror sits at forty-five degrees and throws the image up onto a ground screen. A condenser evens the field; the roof prism turns the picture the right way round on its way to the eyepiece. Five reflections in total, counting the mirror.

05CHASSIS

Cut once, in a single setup

One casting, with the film gate machined directly into it. Rails, mount face and shutter crate are all cut without moving the part, which makes the distance from flange to film a property of the casting rather than of how carefully anyone assembled the camera. Forty-five and a half millimetres, whatever else drifts.

06TRANSPORT

A spring counts the slow speeds

Two curtains cross the gate one after the other, and the gap between them is the exposure. Below 1/60 an escapement counts the interval off a spring; above it, the interval is simply how long the second curtain takes to catch the first. No quartz, no electronics, nothing to go flat in a drawer.

07OPTIC

Three pieces of glass and a helicoid

Three elements on one axis, in one seat. Focus carries all three forward together rather than shifting a group inside the barrel, so the element spacing never changes as you rack in. The iris closes on eight straight blades, behind the middle element.

08BASE PLATE

What the tripod pulls against

Directly under the lens axis, a threaded boss takes the tripod, so the body turns about its own optical centre. Beside it: a coin-slot door for the meter battery, and three screws.

09REASSEMBLY

The top deck goes on last

Base first, then the optic, the transport, the chassis, the finder. It goes on last because everything underneath has to be adjusted before it is covered.