Takane

Takane Kōgaku (高嶺光学, Takane Optical), was from 1953 to 1958 the maker of several folding roll-film cameras, most models of which had an integrated range/viewfinder and unit focusing and were sold as the Mine Six. The final model, the Super 66, was remarkable as the first Japanese folder to have a coupled exposure meter.

The manufacturer that became Takane was started by Mr Izawa (井沢広治) in 1952, in suburban Takasaki (north from Tokyo), and more precisely in the garden of his father, a farmer. (The resulting company would remain in the Takasaki area until its demise.) Izawa's factory produced components for other companies, among which was Mihama Seikō (三浜精工; very soon to be Suruga Seiki, 駿河精機), for whose Mihama Six it produced the body.

In 1953, Izawa determined to make his own camera. He obtained a loan from Daidō bank (now the Gunma Bank), created a company that he gratefully named Daidō Seikō (大同精工, Daidō precision engineering) and, using the body first designed for the Mihama Six, produced two folding viewfinder cameras, the Daido Six and Semi.

A change of company name to Takane Kōgaku soon followed, with a new camera, the Sisley 55, which added a (non-coupled) rangefinder to the Daido Six.

The Sisley 55 was a solid camera, but not a remarkable one. Izawa realized that he needed a better product, which in turn would require specialist knowhow. He employed a new head of production, Machida Nobuyoshi (町田信義), and also had the good fortune to attract the attention of a well-heeled elderly enthusiast, the aristocratic local photographer Sakurai Ihei (桜井伊兵衛), who in turn encouraged Izawa to employ as designer Takamatsu Kingo (高松金吾), who had worked at Konishiroku during the war and was now a teacher of engineering in Takasaki and whose handmade TLR had impressed Sakurai. Takamatsu designed the first Mine Six, whose most obvious innovation was unit focussing (i.e. focussing by movement of the entire lens assembly, and not merely the frontmost element), but which also had an improved shutter and an S-Kominar lens from Nittō Kōgaku (日東光学), whose president, Kaneko Sadamasa (金子定正), took a great interest in the camera and gave useful advice for collimation and other adjustments.

The next model, the Mine Six IIF, had a coupled rangefinder, but Takane still wanted improvements to keep its product competitive, so an improved version of the IIF was released with a Copal shutter and Asahi Takumar lens.

The next stage was the IIISB (or IIIS), which had two advances. First, "semi-automation": film advance stopped automatically, and thus there was no need for, or provision of, one or more red windows on the back. (The camera could not be used for 6×4.5.) Secondly, a larger finder with a brightline with marks for parallax (although not moving to adjust for parallax).

A third claimed advance was a lens that was advertised as by Zunow, famous for its fast lenses for 35mm cameras. While Zunow had no experience of lenses for purposes such as this, one of its new employees was Kunitomo Kenji (国友健司), who had designed the "Ofunar" lens for Ōfuna Kōgaku's Ofunaflex and Ofuna Six cameras, and an arrangement was made among Zunow, Ōfuna and Takane whereby Zunow would use the Ofunar design for the "Zuminor" lens of the Mine Six, and Takane would manufacture a batch of Mine Six IIF bodies for export as Ofuna Six cameras.

The Mine Six IIISB brought complaints from Konishiroku, Mamiya and Aires for infringing patents on rangefinder image, rangefinder linkage, and brightline respectively. (Takamatsu later acknowledged that the brightline came from the Aires 35II, saying that he simply adopted any innovation that he admired and that the matter of patents had not occurred to him.) A deal was struck with Aires whereby Takane would produce the body (but not the finder) of the Aires Viceroy, for export to India.

Takane learned from a local subsidiary of Kuwano Denki (桑野電気), a Tokyo-based electrical company, that Kuwano was producing selenium cells. It dispatched a young designer, Mr Nakazato (中里隆), to Kuwano to work out a way of incorporating a meter within a redesigned Mine Six. It proved impossible to do this together with the machinery of the IIIS(B), and the resulting Mine Six Super 66 therefore dropped semi-automation and returned to red windows.

For a short time things looked good, as Takane was simultaneously selling the IIF, the IIISB and the Super 66, for a healthy demand. But the company suddenly received word that a major wholesaler in Osaka, previously rumored to be in difficulties, was unable to pay its debts. This was a major factor in Izawa's decision to close the company at the end of 1958: another was the company's awareness of the decline in appeal of roll-film folders in favor of 35mm cameras, for which it had prepared no designs.

Takamatsu returned to teaching, Nakazato moved to the nearby company Max (famous for staplers), and it is said that some employees went on to manufacture the Fuji 35. Hagiya Takeshi, author of the study of Takane from which most of the material above is derived, does not say what Izawa and Machida did, but describes them as among his informants in 1993.

Personal names above are in the Japanese order: surname first.

Models

• Daido Six
• Daido Semi
• Sisley 55
• Mine Six
• Mine Six IIF
• Mine Six IIFb
• Mine Six IIIS/IIISB
• Mine Six Super 66

Sources / further reading

• Hagiya Takeshi (萩谷剛). "Mine Shikkusu: Gunma-ken Takasaki-shi no kameramēkā" (ミネシックス：群馬県高崎市のカメラメーカー, Mine Six: A camera-maker in Takasaki, Gunma). Chapter 7 of Zunō kamera tanjō: Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari (ズノーカメラ誕生：戦後国産カメラ10物語, The birth of the Zunow camera: Ten stories of postwar Japanese camera makers). Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1999. ISBN 4-257-12023-1 In Japanese only. First published in issue 27 (December 1993) of Kamera rebyū: Kurashikku kamera senka (カメラレビュー・クラシックカメラ専科), this history of Takane is based on Hagiya's interviews with Machida, Izawa, Takamatsu and Nakazato.
• Hagiya Takeshi (萩谷剛). "Ōfuna Kōgaku no kamera: Kamera kara kōgaku heiki e" (大船光学のカメラ：カメラから光学兵器へ, The cameras of Ōfuna Kōgaku: From cameras to military optics). Chapter 8 of Zunō kamera tanjō: Sengo kokusan kamera jū monogatari. First published in issue 39 (September 1996) of Kamera rebyū: Kurashikku kamera senka (カメラレビュー・クラシックカメラ専科).