I was given my first camera - an Agfa Autostar Pocket - when I was 10 years old. It didn’t take long for the photography bug to bite (especially as my father was a professional photographer, and always seemed to be holding a camera himself), and I soon moved in to the world of 35mm. That was the birth of my camera collection.

Over the years I gradually became somewhat more focussed in which cameras I kept, and which were put up for sale. These days I concentrate on a seemingly narrow range - Japanese half-frame cameras of the ’50s and ’60s - although there are thousands of subtle variations here.

This site documents my camera collection, looking most at the abovementioned half-frames; with occasional references to a modern DSLR or two. Grab a cool drink, put your feet up and enjoy.

Half-frame cameras are those which made the most of 35mm film, by squeezing two images into each frame (as a typical SLR would see it). These images measure 18mm x 24mm, or close to it (17 × 24 and 18 × 23 are also fairly common).

In addition to the savings in film, half-frame cameras usually afforded the following benefits :

• they were smaller and lighter than their full-frame counterparts (eventually driving 35mm cameras to become smaller and lighter themselves)
• half-frame cameras are still being produced, alongside their full-frame cousins - so many have autoexposure, motor drives, built-in flash etc
• standard 35mm film is used, which is still fairly easy to come by

‘HIT’-style cameras

The Half-Frame cameras I generally focus on may be thought of a subset of the above, the various ‘HIT’-style cameras. These cameras made used of the French ‘Pathe Rural’ 17.5mm film, which was just a half-sized version of 35mm film. Once again, cost savings were the reasoning behind this.

The original HIT cameras were produced in post-war Japan, and were widely copied. Because of this, any camera with similar features is known as a ‘HIT’. Typically this means it has :

• a single shutter speed
• a fixed-focus lens
• a fixed aperture
• a body style similar to the original HIT

and used paper-backed 17.5mm film (producing 14mm x 14mm images).

Beautiful things.

Although I’m surrounded by half-frames (here’s a complete list), my day-to-day kit is slightly more modern. Here are the things I generally use :

• Canon EOS 10D
• Canon EOS 300D
• Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8L USM
• Speedlite 550EX
• Lowepro Micro Trekker 100
• SanDisk ImageMate FireWire card reader
• Sandisk Ultra II Compact Flash cards