Cosina aka Cosina Company Ltd. of Nagano, Japan is a Japanese camera maker. The company was founded by Mr. B. Kobayashi in 1959 as a lens factory. Though the company has produced several cameras under its own name, it is better known for making cameras for resale under other labels -- for example it manufactured camera bodies for many better-known camera brands, including Contax, Nikon, Revue, Olympus, Vivitar, and Yashica. Cosina also manufactures the modern Voigtländer Bessa line of cameras and optics, along with the newly revived Zeiss Ikon rangefinder camera and lenses.
In Germany, a lot of Cosina cameras and lenses were marketed by Photo Porst, for many years Germany's biggest photo retailer and mailorder house under their house brand name Porst.
One of Cosina's more interesting camera designs was the E1 Solar, introduced in 1994. The E1, a 35mm film SLR, is powered by rechargeable batteries charged by a small solar panel atop the camera prism housing.
A recent Cosina-branded product was the SW-107, identical to the (silver) Bessa L except for a different top plate, made at the beginning of the Cosina Voigtländer era for areas where Cosina was not authorized to market the Voigtländer trademark. The 107 is hard to find now.
In 2005 Zeiss and Cosina announced a partnership whereby Cosina would manufacture the new Zeiss Ikon RF camera and most of the accompanying M mount lenses.
35mm SLR
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| Cosina CSR, by Rich1078346 |
- Cosina C1
- Cosina CS
- Cosina CSL
- Cosina CSM
- Cosina CSR
- Cosina CT
- Cosina CX
- E1 Solar
- Cosina GX
- Cosina Hi-Lite
- Cosina Hi-Lite EC
- Argus/Cosina STL [1]
- Argus/Cosina STL 1000
35mm compact
- Cosina 35 (rangefinder, same as Vivitar 35EE)
- Cosina 35 EE
- Cosina 35 FR
- Cosina 35 Compact E (yet another Konica C35 rip-off, same as the the Porst 135 S, similar to Voigtlander VF 135).
- Cosina CX-1
- Cosina CX-2
- Cosina CX-5f
- Cosina AF-35
- Cosina CX70
35mm, Voigtländer brand
Notes
Links
- Cosina PDF manuals, manuals for various Cosina models at Orphancameras.com
- Cosina Camera List in the Camera Collector forums
- Cosina Cameras at www.collection-appareils.fr
- Cosina E1 Solar, a page in french about the Cosina E1 Solar... and his cousin the Voigtländer Bessa
- Cosina page at Collection G. Even's site
- discussion threads Cosina original and OEM SLRs and Another Cosina variation at camera collectors' proboards [1]