The last time I talked about a camera from Ricoh was back in November of 2023. And that camera was the Ricohmatic 225 – a medium format TLR. And while Ricoh did produce several TLRs, they were much more prolific with other formats – and 35mm especially.
And while you might think that you’re not that familiar with Ricoh cameras, if you’re Gen X’er like me, or a baby boomer, you probably are, you just don’t realize it. So, let me explain.
Today, we have Amazon – a place we can go to buy just about anything you’d ever need or want. And I’m willing to bet that it’s probably the first place we think to look if we need something. But what did we do before Amazon? Or even before the internet? Well, if you were in North America, you probably turned to the Sears Catalog.
These catalogs had just about anything you’d ever need or want to buy. I have an old one from the Spring/Summer of 1981. And this thing has one-thousand, five hundred and three pages (I think that’s more pages than the Bible) and yes, I DID spend the better part of a day looking through it. And what I discovered was that in 1981, I could get everything from baby diapers to a replacement Chevy 396 engine – with heads! And somewhere in between all that you could get cameras.
If I turn to the camera section, I can find two brands listed – Canon and Minolta, but you’ll also see ones branded as Sears. But those Sears cameras were actually re-badged Ricoh cameras. And this wasn’t only for Sears’ cameras, but the Focal brand cameras from K-Mart were also Ricoh cameras that were re-badged.
Other manufacturers, like Minolta for example, would sometimes produce special models that were sold exclusively in these department stores. But these were still branded as Minolta. The Sears or K-Mart house brands really gave no clue as to which camera maker produced them. But by and large, that maker was Ricoh.
Ricoh’s first 35mm SLR with interchangeable lenses was the Singlex in 1962. The one I’m talking about her is the Singlex TLS – so a different camera. BUT – the unusual thing about the original Singlex is that it had a Nikon F mount. And here is where it gets a little weird: the original Singlex of 1962 was basically a Nikon Nikkorex camera – which was actually not built by Nikon, but by Mamiya.
So, what the heck?? Well, it boils down to there being a huge demand for Japanese SLRs in the early 1960s, and even though Ricoh had been producing rangefinders and TLRs, it wasn’t quite ready to go to market with an SLR of their own design. So they purchased the production tools for the Nikkorex from Mamiya and used them to create the first version of the Singlex – complete with the Nikon lens mount.
But, in 1967 Ricoh did finally release their self-designed Singlex TLS. This camera did NOT use the Nikon F mount. It used the more universal M42 screw mount – like the Pentax Spotmatic series did. Which is actually a bit of foreshadowing, because in 2011, Ricoh actually acquired Pentax and continues to produce Pentax-branded cameras to this day. So the point I guess I’m making here is that Ricoh has been a major player in the camera business for many years, and in a lot of those years they were behind the scenes of various other brands. Un-sung heroes, let’s call it.
For more details on this camera, I made a in-depth video review you can check out below.
Vintage Camera Digest 