A camera repairer with decades of experience fixing film cameras has published a manifesto for a new 35mm camera project.
Oleg Khalyavin repairs cameras under the name OK Vintage Camera. He was until recently based in his native Russia but recently moved to Slovakia. He is one of only a few repairers able to work on the more complex Soviet camera designs such as the Kiev SLRs, Zenit-16 and KMZ Drug, but he also repairs classic designs such as Leicas and Contax rangefinders.
The manifesto – called the X35 Project – was first shown to Kosmo Foto as it was taking shape late last year. (Khalyavin occasionally writes articles about camera repair and design for Kosmo Foto, and I helped with with editing of the text into English).
The 35-step manifesto X35 Project comes amid the likelihood of two new 35mm compact cameras being released this year – a half-frame zone-focus model under the Pentax name by Ricoh Imaging, and a Rollei 35 lookalike produced by Hong Kong’s MiNT Camera.
The X35 Project asks questions about what cameras make sense to produce in the 21st Century, in an ecosystem where the rising number of new film photographers can choose from ten – if not hundreds – of millions of usable film cameras from the 20th Century.
One example from the list is below (reproduced with permission):
So why does nobody produce new and good cameras?
I guess the main answer is simple: such a manufacturer would have to compete with the millions of old cameras that people still have. It is difficult to compete with something, what already exists, and at the same time has almost zero cost. Yes, zero cost. It has already been purchased from the manufacturer. They were made, sold, and the money changed hands.
Today you can compete only with the cost of high-quality repairs of old equipment. In other words: there are good old Leica and Contax cameras. They are 70-90 years old. Some of them have collectible value, and some of them don’t. But to use them for practical shooting, these cameras need to be repaired. The price of such work is several hundred dollars. So it turns out that the production of a new camera should be such that the selling price is comparable to the service price of a good old camera.
Khalyavin tells Kosmo Foto: “I had the idea about a new camera more than three years before but one day I got a clue that my idea is not so simple and I need to explain not so simple things. They looked simple in my head, but explaining needed me to write it down.
“Interest is rising,” he says. “The main difference is the change of kind of people. Ten years ago all my customers were experienced people, but last year a lot of people with minor knowledge about film photography became my customers.”
Khalyavin has already designed a new camera shutter which he shared with Kosmo Foto in 2022, and which he hopes might form part of a future camera project. The shutter design takes its inspiration from the Contax cameras of the 1930s. “The main principles of my shutter are close to the shutters that were made one hundred years ago. I think the realisation and the technology solution may be patented at first and possibly licensed.” Would he license the shutter for a new camera project? “That is too complex question. I have no answer yet.”
Khalyavin’s manifesto is an part engineer’s roadmap and part philosophical exercise. Any new camera project is likely to need hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital before the first prototype takes pictures. So far, the only companies committed to such a project seem to be Leica (bringing back the M6 in 2022), MiNT Camera and Ricoh Imaging.
Look at the doomed Reflex project from 2017, which raised more than £130,000 from a Kickstarter campaign in order to build a new M42-mount SLR but folded four years later without a properly working prototype being completed . Or the Elbaflex project, which intended to resurrect the Kiev-19M SLR but with final production moved to Germany. (The Kickstarter for the Elbaflex failed to raise the required amount, and the company which intended to build it, Net SE, later collapsed.)
Khalyavin’s X35 Project puts the challenges and opportunities for a possible film camera project in plain language. It will be interesting to see if any other camera manufacturers are thinking along the same lines.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
- Fujifilm bringing back colour film production – in China - 21/06/2024
- MiNT Camera’s Rollei 35AF to be released ‘by end of September’ - 19/06/2024
- Pentax 17: First impressions - 17/06/2024
Oleg is a great guy and is keeping old soviet cameras and lenses alive for us to enjoy. If Oleg made a new camera I’m sure the interest would be there for it, but the price may be what puts people off.