Single-lens Reflex Camera - History

History

• Medium format SLR by Hasselblad

• The 1952 (Pentax) Asahiflex, Japan's first single-lens reflex camera

• The Contaflex III a single-lens reflex camera from West Germany from 1957, with additional 115 mm lens

• The 35 mm film-based Nikon F, 1959, the world's first single-lens reflex system camera

• Canon Pellix, 1965

• The Pentax Spotmatic IIa, 1971

• Olympus The 35 mm film-based Olympus OM-2 (1975), which was the first SLR to measure light for electronic flash at the shutter curtain.

• Casio RF2 35mm film SLR

• Nikon F5 professional SLR, 1996

• Digital SLR Nikon D200 and a Nikon film scanner

Large format SLR cameras were probably first marketed with the introduction of C.R. Smith's Monocular Duplex (USA, 1884). SLRs for smaller exposure formats were launched in the 1920s by several camera makers. The first 35 mm SLR available to the mass market, Leica's PLOOT reflex housing along with a 200mm f4.5 lens paired to a 35mm rangefinder camera body, debuted in 1935. The Soviet Спорт (“Sport”), also a 24mm by 36mm image size, was prototyped in 1934 and went to market in 1937. K. Nüchterlein's Kine Exakta (Germany, 1936) was the first integrated 35mm SLR to enter the market. Additional Exakta models, all with waist-level finders, were produced up to and during World War II. Another ancestor of the modern SLR camera was the Swiss-made Alpa, which was innovative, and influenced the later Japanese cameras. The first eye-level SLR viewfinder was patented in Hungary on August 23, 1943 by Jenő Dulovits, who then designed the first 35 mm camera with one, the Duflex, which used a system of mirrors to provide a laterally correct, upright image in the eye-level viewfinder. The Duflex, which went into serial production in 1948, was also the world's first SLR with an instant-return (a.k.a. autoreturn) mirror.

The first commercially produced SLR that employed a roof pentaprism was the Zeiss Ikon VEB Contax S, announced on May 20, 1949.

The Japanese adopted and further developed the SLR. In 1952, Asahi developed the Asahiflex and in 1954, the Asahiflex IIB. In 1957, the Asahi Pentax combined the fixed pentaprism and the right-hand thumb wind lever. Nikon, Canon and Yashica introduced their first SLRs in 1959 (the F, Canonflex, and Pentamatic, respectively).