Miranda Sensorex

The lovely Miranda Sensorex is responsible for getting me into photography. I had always been interested in a fully manual SLR but I never really knew anything about getting one or ever got around to it. Then while hitting some garage sales with my friend Alexis, I came across a lovely Miranda Sensorex from Japan (1967). This camera is built like a tank and is still working great! The color inaccuracy, combined with strange settings in my inexperienced hands, along with encouragement from my friend Ethan, helped me dive right into the world of photography with exciting results! The Miranda, although little known today, was actually a pro-sumer model of it's day with more features than many other classic cameras that became more popular. It had average features like match needle metering and B-1000 shutter speeds, but had other bonus features like aperture preview (missing on the classic Pentax K1000 and Spotmatic), a self timer (also missing on the Pentaxes) and a removable prism with 9 different viewfinder options! The lenses for the Mirada bayonet mount are definitely decent as well, characterized by their especially warm colors. Some med. fast lenses were offered, such as the 50mm f/1.4 and the 135mm f/2.5, but don't expect the 50mm f/1.4 lense to actually be as fast as, say, an SMC Pentax 50mm f/1.4. All in all it's a great system, and wonderful examples of Miranda cameras with fast lenses can be had for $25-40 dollars, which makes it MY NOMINATION FOR BEST CLASSIC SLR UNDER $50! Almost all of the pictures posted before 11/06/08 were taken with the Miranda... it's only recently that I've started to actually want to use other cameras outside of just a test roll which usually just made me want to go back to my Miranda