by
Karen Nakamuraby
Karen Nakamura
The Aires 35-V looks like the misbegotten love-child of a Leica screw-mount Barnack camera and a Leica M series. It has the characteristic 3 windows and projected framelines of a M-series camera, but the appearance slow-speed shutter dial of a screw mount camera. It's a heavy camera, clearly all steel and brass. No plastic parts here. It weighs a ton and a half.
Oddly (for a rangefinder),
the camera has a Seikosha leaf-shutter, but odder still it has an interchangeable
bayonet
lens mount. The bayonet-mount leaf-shutter is reminiscent of the Voigtlander
Bessamatic SLR, but unlike the Voigt, the Aires interchangeable lenses have
all their elements in one unit. There is no lens element left in the body
behind the leaf shutter. This is because rangefinders have more space in
front of the film plane, unlike SLRs which have to have a lens unit. This
allows the leaf-shutter to be placed far to the rear, almost where a focal-plane
shutter would be. For that reason, I could say that the Aires has a "focal-plane
leaf shutter."
1958 was a bad year to put out a high-quality rangefinder. Released in 1954, Leica's M3 was taking the rangefinder world by storm, at the same time most other manufacturers were giving up their RF lines and moving towards SLRs. I don't have a history of Aires Camera, but my guess is that their poured all their R&D yen into the 35-V, only to have the tides turn against them.
The quality of the 35-V is apparent. Solid chrome. A great shutter. The RF doesn't have switching framelines or parallax correction, but has bright projected framelines and accurate focusing. The leaf-shutter can of course synch at all speeds, and the accessory shoe has the rudimentary beginnings of a flash synch capability.
Sporting a Leica-inspired form, the camera has what looks like a slow-shutter speed dial on the front right. But that doesn't make sense since it's a leaf-shutter and has the shutter speed dial on the lens mount. What's up?
The "slow-speed-dial" is actually a little dial that switches between D-A-R. The A is for Advance or regular shooting. 'D' is for Double-exposures. And 'R' is for Rewind.
Camera
Name |
Aires 35-V | |
|---|---|---|
Manufacturer |
Aires
Camera Ind. Tokyo Japan |
|
Place
of Manufacture |
Japan |
|
Date
of Manufacture |
1958-62 | |
Focusing
System |
Coupled
rangefinder |
|
Lens
Mount |
Aires
RF Bayonet Mount |
|
Shutter |
Seikosha-MX leaf shutter: 1 sec. - 1/400 sec + B |
|
Metering
System |
Built-in selenium meter |
|
Flash |
PC-type
flash connection on body left side |
|
Film
type / speeds |
|
|
Battery
type |
n/a | |
Dimensions
and weight |
xx
W x xx H x xx D mm |
|
Retail
price |
||
|
Manufacturer
|
Aires Camera
|
||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Lens
|
35mm f/3.2 |
45mm f/1.5 |
100mm f/3.5 |
|
Place
of Manufacture
|
Japan |
||
|
Serial #
|
|||
|
Date
of Manufacture
|
|||
|
Lens Construction
|
|||
|
Lens
Mount
|
Aires
RF Bayonet Mount
|
||
|
Focusing range
|
0.8 meter - infinity |
||
|
Apertures
|
|
f/1.5 ~
f/16 (1 stop click stops) |
|
|
Filter
Mount
|
|
Filter:
49mm threaded |
|
|
Body Construction
|
|||
|
Dimensions
and weight
|
|||
|
Retail
price
|
|||
Aires Camera was one of those post-War Japanese camera manufacturers that sprung up in the 1950s and didn't survive the camera wars of the 1960s. Their first camera came out in 1951 and the last one was the Aires 35-V which lasted until 1962.
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