This Ricoh Ricohflex Million is an entry level Twin Lens reflex tracing
its ancestry to the 1950 Ricohflex III. Whilst Ricoh made no "Rolliesque"
pretensions for it, the execution exhibits a little more finesse than
some of it's contemporaries. Construction is fairly simple, a box from pressed and folded mild steel sheet, finished with black enamel and faux leather infills. Turned aluminium lens barrels, geared to each other for focussing. The Ricohflex Million has an interesting
feature that allows different film backs to be used, either 120, 127 or
even 36mm. To facilitate this, a rotating plate the back allows the red
window to be moved to the appropriate position to align with the backing
paper numbers. This wouldn't work with 35mm, as it has no backing paper,
so the red window has a blanking plate, and the user rotates the wind
on knob one rotation for each frame. The focus screen needs to be rotated
to use the guides for 127 film etched into it, this entails removing the
four screws retaining the focus hood. The film back is also required,
of course. It has a magnifier for fine focus and an odd viewfinder through
he slotted hood. The viewfinder is reasonably bright too.
This camera was donated to the collection by Dennis Gittings in November
2011, just needing a deep clean to get it presentable. |