Bill Delehanty wrote:

>Thanks for the tip! That makes it much easier and I
>looked at most of them.
>
Oh, good.

>They make a good story. That
>may be another "half frame" advantage with all the
>frames available. The Chaika seems to do a great job
>with color. I'm not familiar with that camera line,
>though I've seen them for sale on Ebay.
>
They're fairly cheaply made cameras with nice lenses. I'm happy with
the results I got from mine. One of my main focuses in collecting is
Soviet and Russian cameras; there's a very good dealer and fellow
collector who suggested that I give the Chaikas a try, and I'm glad I did.

The other half-frame in my collection that I'd really like to try out
one of these days is a Mercury II. I've admired the looks of those
cameras for decades, and finally bought one a couple of years ago. But,
I haven't actually shot with it yet, although it seems to be in good shape.

The only half-frame cameras that I've used so far are the Chaika-3, and
a low-end Olympus Pen... I forget which model. Oh, and a Nimslo, but
that really doesn't/shouldn't count... it's a stereo camera that takes
four half-frame photos at a time. For that matter, I suppose two other
stereo cameras of mine that I've used could be called half-frame models,
since they take two half-frame photos at a time. But, it's stretching
the definition a bit too much I'd say!

Bruce Feist