Bencini Koroll II

Another quirky camera for the collection. Launched around 1962, this Italian camera has a Bencini Acromatico 55mm lens with a choice of two apertures, f/9 and f/16. The shutter has two speeds: 1/50 and 1/100 plus a Bulb setting, and there is a flash port and cold shoe. That thing that looks like a selenium cell light meter in the picture, that's just decorative. So not all that impressive then, but certainly a stylish looking camera.

What is quirky about it is that it shoots 24 images of 3x4.5cm on 120 film. So you get double the number of frames you normally would on medium format, but oddly it leaves a strip of about 15mm of the film unexposed, so technically there is some waste.

There is a nice bright viewfinder (though it does give a strong blue cast on your subject) and no double exposure prevention.

To advance the film you wind on using the two red windows on the back.  To open the film back you need to slide the catches downwards on each side of the camera. Then the back comes away.

Now our model has been treated a little heavy handedly at some point in its life. It has a lot of scuffs around its accessory shoe. It arrived with the equally hard-done-by Agfa Silette. Who knows? Maybe they were stored together in the same bag of rocks.

Beyond its cosmetic scuffs, the focusing dial had completely seized, and was stuck at infinity. Some isopropyl alcohol soon had it turning again.

The lens produces some nice sharp detail and it has a strong vignette.  One thing to watch out for on this camera is the parallax. After viewing the photos taken on this film we noticed that a lot of the subjects that we thought were dead centre in the frame were actually quite a bit to the left.