Look at this little beauty … the Mamiya -16 16mm sub miniature camera, made between 1949 and 1950 In Occupied Japan. This is a fascinating little camera, the first in the relatively short-lived range of 16mm cameras from Japanese manufacturer Mamiya. As with the Kiev 30, this camera interests me on a number of different levels.
At the end of the Second World War, Japan was occupied by the Americans under the stewardship of General Douglas A. MacArthur. Unlike Germany, which was divided up between the Four Powers (Great Britain, the United States, France, and the Soviet Union - for more information on this see my book Cold War Berlin: An Island City Volume 1, The Birth of the Cold War …), Japan became MacArthur’s personal fiefdom. However, as in Germany, the occupying power was responsible for demilitarisation, reconstruction, rebuilding the economy, and reshaping society in the image of its conquerors.
The Mamiya company was founded in 1940 by Seiichi Mamiya (the S and M in its original logo, made up from two crossed lenses) with its headquarters in Tokyo, producing the famed Mamiya 6 folding bellows medium format rangefinder. The operation was lucky to survive the war, and, under the close supervision of the US authorities, began production again, winning a lucrative contract to produce cameras for the United States Central P.X. Procurement Office.* This ensured the Mamiya brand found its way into the biggest consumer market in the world, enjoying a post-war boom … living the American dream.
As well as the Mamiya 6 rangefinder, the company developed an affordable compact camera using the established 16mm format.** Rather pointedly, it has 'MADE IN OCCUPIED JAPAN' engraved on the back, leaving the (mostly) US buyers in no doubt of its origin and their status as conquerers.
It is a tiny camera, only 6.5 x 4 x 3 cm (2.6 x 1.6 x 1.2 inches) but its all-metal construction means it weighs in at a hefty 170g (6 oz). To operate the camera, you pull out a slider from the side that reveals the lens (the 'Cute' fixed focus f/3.5 25mm lens - Cute was what it was called, not an aesthetic judgement on my part!), and serves as the front of a (very) basic viewfinder. A smaller slider is pulled out at the back forming the rear - it's more like the open sights on a rifle, and certainly without any parallax correction!
All the controls are on the top face, and this is one of the most intruiging aspects of this camera - the rest of the design is extremely boxy, with straight edges and almost sharp corners, but on this plate the designer (presumably Seiichi Mamiya) has gone off-piste, creating an almost art-deco curvy shape, inconsistent radii, and an odd typographical treatment to the '-16'. The three controls (aperture, shutter speed, and film advance) are clearly round dials but unlike later designs like the Mamiya-16 Automatic (see below), he covered them with a metal plate, with a somewhat random form factor. It's a very perplexing solution, giving this diminutive camera real charm.
It is limited to just four shutter speed options - Bulb, 1/100th, 1/50th, and 1/25th of a second, and five aperture settings - f/3.5, 4, 5.6, 8, and 11. There's a small frame number window (counts up to 20) and a shutter release with a cable release thread inside.
The base of the camera has a tiny non-standard thread, presumably for a tripod, and a leatherette insert in the approximate shape of the film cassette - there are also leatherette inserts on both sides. The whole of the base plate comes off by pressing a tiny clip, revealing the film compartment - time will tell how light-tight it is!
Mine is the Type I version - the Type II and III had standard 1/4" tripod sockets and variations on the shutter speed dial plus rudimentary parallax markings on the viewfinder.***
The Mamiya-16 takes unperforated 16mm film (as in the Minolta 16 and Kiev cameras) producing a 10 x 14mm image but uses a proprietary cassette - non-standardisation was one of the main reasons that the 16mm format died out in the face of stiff competition from the Kodak 110 cartridge, launched in 1972.
When it was launched, the Mamiya-16 came with a pair of un-linked brass film cassettes - you would load a roll of film in one of them, and then connect the end to the spool to the second, before threading the un-tensioned film carefully through the gate, ensuring the slot in the cassette properly engaged with the drive wheel (not my photo). All in all, a recipe for disaster. Mine only came with one of the cassettes, but if I can find another I'll certainly try it, but failing that, I'll load and unload it in the dark and loop the film loose in the cavity, with the film being pulled through the gate by the drive wheel.
The arrival of their plastic linked cassette made the loading process a lot more secure. Although Minolta 16 cassettes are fairly commonplace, Mamiya-16 cassettes are hard to come by, but thankfully the 3D printing community has come to the rescue - mine came from Connor Barford on eBay (https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/connorjbarford). The cassette comes without the light-proofing felt, but Wing from www.polarbearcamera.com kindly supplied a sheet of 1mm self adhesive felt to try out - I'll do a separate post about loading it.
Lastly, the camera came in a nice fitted leather case, which was stamped with the Mamiya S + M logo and (presumably) the buyer's initials (R. E. H.).
I have another Mamiya 16 camera - the Automatic, which came a decade later, in 1960. It is altogether a more sophisticated camera, bigger and heavier (275 g or 9 3/4 oz), but it shares some of the earlier model's styling, such as the quirky viewfinder but not the random curves of the original. I'll do a post on the Mamiya-16 Automatic in due course
Mamiya also produced a version of the Mamiya-16 for the Japanese police - the aptly named Mamiya 16 Police. Finished in black with subdued markings, it came with a clip on waist-level viewfinder for more covert photography (Minox did a right-angled viewfinder for similar reasons) and a clip on filter attachment. It came with two belt pouches - one for the camera, and one for spare film and the attachments.
Only manufactured in 1949, the Mamiya-16 Police model is now very rare, and one sold at auction for €4,800 2013 (not my photo).
I will do subsequent posts on loading the Mamiya 16 cassettes, and with the results from my first shoot with the camera.
* The PX or Post Exchange is the US Army’s retail operation, providing goods and services for US service personnel at US bases the world over. The British equivalent is the NAAFI.
** Eastman Kodak introduced 16mm film in 1923, as a less expensive alternative to 35mm for amateurs.
*** The definitive on-line resource for information on subminiature cameras is submin.com, which has been compiled over many years by Gerald McMullon. Here's the page on the Mamiya-16:
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