My Miranda family
I decided a couple of weeks ago to concentrate my ‘camera collecting’ persona on two vintage camera makers for the next few months to try to build up a more complete collection of a couple of makes rather than having ‘bits n pieces’ of lots of different cameras. The two makes I’m going to try to build up are Topcon and Miranda.
This post is going to be the ‘landing page’ for the Miranda collection which I will update with the additional cameras and accessories as I acquire them. So this is my collection at the moment. Each of these cameras have been bought from eBay for between £10 and £36.
So here I have
- Miranda Fv with additional TTL viewfinder
- Miranda F
- Miranda Sensomat RE x 2
- Miranda Sensomat RE-II (in black – not shown)
- Miranda Sensomat RE-II (in chrome – not shown)
- Miranda Dr with additional waist level finder
- Miranda D with old style Miranda wording (not shown)
- Miranda Automex III (not shown)
- Miranda Sensorex
- Miranda Sensorex II
- Miranda Sensorex EE
- Miranda Sensorex EE2
- Soligor 135mm f/3.5 M44 mount lens
- Miranda FM with Metered viewfinder (not shown)
- Miranda G
- Miranda dx-3
- Miranda 50mm f/1.9 lens
- Soligor 50mm f/1.8 Pre-set lens (not shown)
- Miranda 35mm f/2.8 lens (not shown)
- Miranda 28mm f/2.8 lens (not shown)
- Miranda 135mm f/2.8 lens (not shown)
- Miranda 300mm f/5.6 lens (not shown)
- Miranda M44 to M42 adapter
- Handbooks for various models (not shown)
I’ve had to carry out some repairs and cleaning on most of these – for details click on the repairs link in the menu above.
I had always thought of Miranda as a cheap, high street chain, low quality brand because as a teenager I remember seeing rows of Miranda cameras on sale in my local Dixons store. What I didn’t know until quite recently was that Dixons acquired the name of Miranda to use on their range of slr cameras after the original Miranda camera company stopped producing cameras. The original Miranda company produced wonderful, beautifully engineered cameras with a wide range of accessories and some quite novel features. For a time in the early 1960’s they were in the bracket of ‘top camera’ manufacturers with the likes of Nikon and Pentax.
For the majority of the time Miranda were producing cameras they shared a few features
Replaceable viewfinders.
All the miranda cameras I own have replaceable viewfinders to allow the photographer to use the most appropriate one for the scene they were composing. Units were available for eye-leve, waist level, metered and magnified. At the moment I have a couple of waist level units and all the cameras also have eye level viewfinders. I have one metered TTL viewfinder which was supplied as an accessory for my Fv, but it is in very poor shape. I have recently also purchased a Miranda Fm which has a non TTL metered unit supplied.
Dual lens mount.
Original Miranda cameras had screw mount lenses with a 44mm thread. When the later cameras changed to a bayonet mount rather than introduce a screw mount to bayonet adaptor the manufacturer decided to make the camera accept either M44 screw mount or the new bayonet mount on the camera body. They did this by adding the bayonet to the outside flange of the camera so the lens mounts over it and locks in place. The internal screw mount was retained so legacy lenses could also be fitted. This is quite a neat arrangement and I’ve not had any problems with it although I have seen reports of the lenses accidentally coming off when the focus is adjusted.
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