Looking for something before the Spring Festival, I inadvertently pulled out a small camera: Yangtze River Balda.
After playing with it for a while, I found that it was not the one I originally bought, it seemed to be collected by the second-hand market later, so I did not die, continued to look, and finally found my original CE35, and then tao's model was CS35A. The difference between the two is not large, and it seems that there is only one battery detection.
The Yangtze River Balda is from Wuhan, very small, only slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, and it is made of plastic, and it is also very light.
After the founding of New China, the camera industry has a history of about fifty years, the first one or two decades of mainland cameras are imitation of some foreign cameras, high-level such as Laika, Luolai, etc., lower grade imitation Ricoh, Agfa, and several imitations of Soviet cameras, basically experimental.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the scale of the domestic camera industry took shape, and some small factories that were later founded began to learn from imitating domestic mature cameras, mainly imitation seagulls, and this period had a certain understanding of the market.
In the 1980s and 1990s, following the market trend, foreign electronic camera technology began to be introduced, of which there were two cameras cooperating with Germany: Qingdao-6 and Yangtze River Balda. In fact, these two cameras are also the technology eliminated by foreign countries, but at that time, our country was poor, the market base was large, although it was eliminated from abroad, it was still very advanced and popular in China.
Among them, Qingdao-6 is relatively early, is the introduction of the German Agfa camera complete technology, the appearance and function is the same, Qingdao-6 camera production time is long, the output is also large, the use of a lot of domestic materials, the later is a completely domestic camera.
And Balda is a late entry into China, its production life is only a few years, although there are several different models, but the same, there is no obvious gap, but later to the collector out of the problem, it is difficult to collect complete, let the domestic camera collector scratch their head.
Yangtze River Balda came out in the mid-nineties, I saw a sales advertisement in the newspaper, and immediately mail ordered one (about 700 yuan), which is this "CE 35", which is an early product. It was surprisingly small, only 150g, like a pack of cigarettes, and could be placed in a pocket.
Although it looks small, the photos taken are not bad, after all, it is a German lens, whether it is clarity or color is surprising, I like it at once. Isn't this exactly what I want to be a "call-and-call, come-and-fight", street sweeping and portable pocket machine?
In those years, whenever I went out, this camera was either in my pocket or in my bag, ready to use, which was really convenient.
Around 2000, I wrote an article entitled "My Experience with a Minibus", which refers to the Yangtze River Balda.
There was also a corresponding small camera "Xiaomi" that year, that is, the small camera Minox produced in Germany, the two were of equal size, but "Xiaomi" was one grade higher than the "minibus", and the former Soviet Union once imitated the "Kiev 36A", but the quality was extremely poor, and the factory was bad and could not be used.
After I wrote "Minibus" that year, I did not write "Xiaomi", but instead wrote the imitation of Xiaomi's "35A" "Kiev 35A, which made me feel pain at once". Both articles can be found online.
I like The Yangtze River Balda mainly for two things:
The first is that it has a good lens, a standard four-piece three-set sky plug lens, mature design with high-quality materials, more than the Japanese camera lens I used at the time.
Another point is its lightness and convenience, although it uses plastic, but it is best to be engineering plastic, the degree of firmness is comparable to metal, not only better than the domestic camera material at that time, that is, the Japanese camera of the same period, there is also a big gap in plastic material.
But this camera also has disadvantages or limitations:
First, it is still manual focus, when the Japanese camera has all moved towards its own AF focus, which is also manually estimated to be outdated, which also makes some people without photography knowledge prohibitive, and it is not conducive to quick grasping.
The second is that its shutter is procedural, complete auto exposure (the post-CS 35A has a gear of 1/500 second, F16 mechanical exposure), so that the light and depth of field are not well controlled, and the use has been greatly limited.
Third, the quality of the lens in the case of large apertures declined, and the film speed used at that time was generally ISO 100 film, if it was shot in low light, it was also very easy to cause hand-holding instability and the photo was not clear, so I called it "Balda in the sun".
In fact, film cameras are different from the current digital, of which the sensitivity of this item, the current digital is beyond a lot, in the past was fixed at ISO 100 (although there are also high sensitivity film, but the price is higher, the particles are coarse), low light to use tripods and flash, so that the limitations of shooting are large.
But whatever? Balda is a practical camera, but the lens and material it uses also raises its value, but it is out of the foundation of the market, after all, this time the Japanese camera relies on advanced technology and low-cost manufacturing, the German camera market space is greatly compressed, and Balda belongs to the upper and lower models, even if it is introduced to China to reduce some costs, but the market has not allowed it.
After 2000 digital full coverage of the traditional film camera, the Yangtze River Balda also stopped production, although its production history of five or six years, but the output is not very large, in recent years and some people play film, looking for old cameras, and Balda's small and light, just is the advantage, many people use it as a pocket machine, the use is very convenient.