Roger W. Hicks

Quality, according to the old saying, doesn't cost: it pays. These new manual-focus, Nikon-fit "ZF" lenses are a perfect illustration of that saying. Sure, they are built by Hirofumi Kobayashi in Japan, but they are built to Zeiss standards from Zeiss designs, and they feel like the Zeiss lenses of yesteryear: smooth, solid, beautifully finished, with a lot of...

The Samoca 35 LE definitely wants to be taken seriously. The box is a classic piece of high 1950s design, and proudly announces "Exposure Meter Built-In" and "Lens - F 2.8." Open it up and there's a really classic leather ever-ready case with metal-rimmed, red velvet-lined removable top, so you can use the camera in the half case. Or you can take it...

This would appear to be a new golden age for rangefinder users. There are now three major systems (Leica, Voigtländer, and Zeiss) and two minor (Epson and Rollei). All use the same cross-compatible lens mount, for which an extensive and excellent range of lenses is available, and all compete with one another, albeit at different price points. Who could have imagined this...

Large format cameras, in the sense of "cameras that take large sheets of film," are ever rarer at photokina. There are still plenty of cameras, and sometimes (it seems) almost as many manufacturers, but because so many of the manufacturers are so tiny, making a few score cameras a year, they are known by word of mouth in the large format "fine art"...