Halina cameras emanated from Hong Kong from the Haking company. Hong Kong at that time was under British rule, and was being being exploited for cheap labour and even cheaper products, it sports the legend "EMPIRE MADE" on the baseplate. Halina cameras were definitely cheap although Haking gave some thought to styling, knowing full well that appearance was half the battle, but they have tended to be overly shiny. The Halina 35X Super is no exception, the bright chrome finish is applied liberally to the top housing and lens barrel, although the pre-polish was cursory and the marks are still plainly evident, they never quite got the hang of matte chrome finishes. It appears to be a restyling of the late 1950s Halina 35X or it's name variant Micronta 35X with a lever wind fitted. The design is based around a weighty die cast body and removable back, The visible components appear reasonably well finished but as soon as you peer under that top housing, Haking's corner cutting (and gear cutting) becomes all too apparent. The same Halina Anastigmat lens was trotted out and fitted, along with the shutter from the 35X. If the intention was to expose people to cheap picture taking with a manually adjustable camera, then it may just have whetted enough appetites to move them on to greater things.

This example was donated to the LICM in May 2013 by Mr. P. Nice, who also took the trouble to ship it from Luxembourg. Mr. Nice also supplied two contemporary images, which is handy, as the old Halina's photographic days are over due to a terminal failure in the shutter.

Body No. Even Haking stopped at that sort of pretentiousness.
Shutter, Three blade leaf type behind lens, B, 25, 50, 100 and 200th
Lens, Halina Anastigmat, 45mm f/3.5
Condition, 7H

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