Wester Autorol
Of all my cameras this may be the most obscure. While it is a conventional medium format folder the company that produced it seems less so (Nishida). They apparently existed between about 1936 and 1958, producing some cameras in their later years under the Wester name. What information there is about this camera online is mostly in Japanese. It’s a well built camera with many nice details. It uses 120 roll film and doesn’t have a window on the back to view frame numbers but actually has a proper frame advance mechanism. Each new frame can be brought forward after pressing the release lever on the back beside the viewfinder. It has a 75mm F3.5 lens to cover the 6cm square negative it produces. Wide open there is strong vignetting that doesn’t entirely go away with stopping down. I actually consider this a good thing as it gives the images a particular look without any manipulation, if I didn’t want this I could be just shooting digital. The shutter goes from 1 second to 1/300 second. The nicest feature though is the coupled rangefinder which really separates this camera from the rest of the folders that I have come across. It’s as easy to use as a 35mm rangefinder but of course the resulting negative is much larger with excellent detail. One difficulty with cameras like this though is getting a perfectly sharp exposure while hand holding, they are inherently hard to hold steady.
