Mamiya Super 16 + flash equipment and tripod | Subminiature camera

A vintage MAMIYA Super 16 Subminiature Spy Camera with leather case and rare flash in original box

You are bidding on a vintage MAMIYA Super 16 Subminiature Spy Camera with leather case and rare flash in original box. What a wonderful little collector camera. In very good Condition ~Nice Collectable Camera. The camera is full working the flash hasn’t been tested

Description

The Mamiya-16 Super was manufactured by Mamiya Camera Company of Tokyo, Japan in the early 1950s. Various sources appear to disagree as to the exact date of manufacture, and furthermore they disagree on variations within the Super 16 model line.

A true subminiature camera, the Mamiya-16 Super uses special cassettes for up to 20 exposures on 16mm film. The image size is 10 x 14 mm. The lens is a 25mm f/3.5 with aperture adjustable to f/11. The shutter is synchronized for flash and adjustable from 1/2 to 1/200 second plus bulb.
The viewfinder is a simple metal frame that retracts into the body when not in use. The camera focuses as close as 1 foot or .3 meter.
There is no rangefinder however, so distance needs to be measured or estimated. The lack of a rangefinder is not a big drawback because the lens has a large depth of field. Only close distances require measurement.
An interesting detail of the viewfinder is a parallax mark at the 1 foot distance. There is also a built-in yellow filter that can be slid in front of the lens as in Minox cameras.

If you have wound the advance wheel, but the shutter does not fire, pull out the viewfinder frame. The shutter is locked when the viewfinder is retracted to prevent accidental exposures when carrying the camera.
This camera has one other nice feature. Notice a circular cutout located below and left of the Mamiya-16 name engraved on the top cover. Inside the cutout are radiating black and white lines. When the film is advanced, the lines spin to indicate the film is advancing properly.

This model also introduced a flash synch with a proprietary socket that also had an accessory insert to convert to a standard PC connector. The flash contact screws into the bottom of the camera, inside the tripod socket. So the flash will only work with Mamiya cameras, even though similar units where sold for Steky and Minute 16 cameras. The accessory converter for standard PC connector is often missing, so perhaps was an optional accessory. The Mamiya flash has a bracket that locks the camera in place with the cable plug screwing the camera to the bracket.

History
In 1951 Mamiya improved on the Mamiya 16 by expanding its range of shutter speeds to 1/2 – 1/200 sec. plus B. The location of the focus lever also moved to the front of the camera. Like the Mamiya-16, the aperture scale only labels every other F-stop. The slide-out frame finder includes marks for parallax adjustment at different distances. A very clever and nicely-made subminiature camera.

In 1957 there was a slight revision labelled Mamiya-16 Super, switching to a black plastic distance scale and adding a film-type reminder dial. This is known to collectors as "version II," although not marked as such.

In 1959 Mamiya introduced the Mamiya-16 Super Model III (labelled with blue engraving), which otherwise does not seem to have changed the specs of the camera.

A related camera which added a selenium meter is the Mamiya 16 Automatic.

See pictures for cosmetic. All the pictures are from the object itself. What you see is what you will receive. The camera itself has not been tested by myself.
Please can you use the refnr “CAM050” in all our communications.

For your information, I will be selling about a hundred subminiature cameras from my collection in the coming months. So if you are a collector follow my account so you can follow my other items for sale the coming months. Thank you for bidding.