Fujica 35-SE
The Germans may have been considered kings of the 35mm rangefinder market in the 1950s, especially after the launch of the Leica M3 in 1954. But Japanese camera designers and manufacturers were determined to keep up the competition. A number a great rangefinder cameras came out of Japan in the 1950s, such as the Fujica 35-SE in 1959.
The Fujica 35-SE, produced by the Fuji Photo Film Co., is a solid, high quality rangefinder. But the first thing you may notice about it is the eccentric layout of its controls. For example, the top of the camera, where most of the important camera controls are typically found (think film advance, film rewind, shutter speed dials, shutter button, etc) is almost completely devoid of anything to do. The only button to be found is the shutter button. The film wind (and frame counter) are located on the camera's base. Oddly enough, the film rewind is on the side of the camera. Focusing is done via a dial on the back of the camera (as opposed to on the lens barrel). Shutter, aperture and ISO are all set on the lens barrel, which itself was not too uncommon.
But once you get past these eccentricities, the Fujica 35-SE has some well thought-out features worth boasting a bit about. Take as an example the focusing system. While the focus dial is on the back of the camera, there is an easy-to-read display atop the camera that has a very intuitive depth of field scale built into it. Furthermore the viewfinder automatically corrects for parallax as focus is changed. The shutter speeds and aperture can be coupled together to quickly change one without changing exposure. None of these features were truly unique, but they can be very nice to have and not all rangefinder cameras of this era had them. One feature that is kind of unique to the Fujica 35-SE is the fact that its leaf shutter has a top speed of 1/1000th. Generally such a shutter speed was reserved only for focal plane shutters. Leaf shutters, while much quieter and able to sync flash at any speed, also usually had slower top speeds around 1/500, 1/400 or even 1/300. You can probably count on one hand the cameras that have a leaf shutter with a 1/1000 speed. So the Fujica 35-SE benefits from having a very quiet shutter but also able to use a fairly quick top shutter speed.
There were a couple variations of this camera produced. Some had 45mm f2.8 lenses while others had 45mm f1.9 lenses. There are also versions with a top speed limited to 1/500.
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