The featured camera for this time is surprisingly small-size camera, "Steky" manufactured around after the war.

This camera was launched in 1947 by Riken Kogaku (Richo), Japan and used 16mm film.
After the war in Japan, midget cameras whose picture size was 14 x 14mm got a large popularity among the soldiers of the Occupation Forces from the U.S. But most of them were of poor quality and no more than toys.
It was then that Steky was produced as a high-quality camera.

While the other midget cameras used 17.5 mm-wide film with leader paper, Steky adopted the film cartridge into which 16 mm-wide rolled film was inserted. And the picture size of Steky was 10 x 14mm. In addition, although the frame counter on the camera side has the scale up to 24 exp., it takes up to 20 exposures in most of the cases using the 45 cm-long 16 mm film.
Following Steky, Mamiya 16, Snappy, Konan 16 Automat and the others came on the market one after another. Like Steky, all of these camera adopted the picuter size of 10 x 14mm.

A standard lens of Steky was f3.5/25mm, and also f5.6/40mm telephoto lens were available, for it adopted interchangeable lens system. In addition to this, several accessories were also provided for it such as "Stekaton", which was the lens attachement ring, and several set of filters.
Shutter speeds can be set among B, 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100sec.

Steky had been manufactured for ten years, and during that period, it had undergone several improvements as such that the flash sync contact, accessory shoe were added to it. And in 1957, a successor to it was released under the name of "Golden Steky". Like the name says it, it was plated with gold on the surface of the camera body.

Well then, let's take a look at it.


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