RicohHi-Color 35

Place the Ricoh Hi-Color 35 in context and you land in a moment when Japanese factories were churning out rangefinders by the million and Leica was suddenly looking expensive. Catalogued as a scale-focus compact, it pairs the Rikenon 35mm f/2.8 with a 35mm film path. Worth knowing up front: a pocketable 1970s gem in bright chrome — predecessor to the FF series.

Format

35mm

Year

1971

Lens

Rikenon 35mm f/2.8

Min. focus

0.9 m (zone)

Flash

Hot shoe

Battery

1× PX625 (mercury)

The Rikenon 35mm f/2.8 is the everyday-light specialist — not a low-light hero, but contrasty, sharp and honest at every aperture. Film supply is a non-issue: any 35mm cassette from any lab works. It was designed around the now-banned 1.35V mercury PX625, so use a Wein cell or an MR-9 voltage adapter if you want the meter to read correctly. There's no built-in flash, but the hot shoe accepts any auto-thyristor unit; a small Vivitar or Sunpak is the period-correct pick. Minimum focus is 0.9 m (zone), close enough for a coffee cup or a face but stops short of true macro. The 35mm field of view sits halfway between observer and participant; it suits anything where you want the viewer to feel in the scene.

Quietly underrated, the Ricoh Hi-Color 35 is the kind of camera people brag about owning five years from now and ten times the price.

• §1A pocketable 1970s gem in bright chrome — predecessor to the FF series.