Chris's camera pages
Gelto D-III with rare Suzuki's Auto Focus rangefinder
Here is an uncommon Toakoki Gelto D-III half-frame 127 roll-film camera with the rare Suzuki's Auto Focus aftermarket rangefinder conversion that I recently acquired. It has kept me busy all afternoon turning it back into a working camera. The rangefinder image was as good as non-existant and the shutter blades were displaced and weren't doing anything useful when I got the camera.I haven't found too much information on it yet, but piecing together what I have found, mostly through the camera-wiki.org Gelto page, it looks likely that this is an early D-III, from the end of 1938, judging by some details like the style of lock, which is the fold-over d-ring style of earlier examples. The lock is now on the base of the camera, having been moved from the top plate during the rangefinder conversion. Another detail pointing to earlier production is the focus scale, marked in fractions of a metre, 2/3, 1/2 etc where later examples apparently were marked 0.5 etc.One more detail is the focal length of the lens, marked as 50mm, later examples were marked 5cm.The serial number seems low too, but I don't know if one continuous range was used, or if each model had its own serial number range.The Suzuki's Auto Focus rangefinder was available in 1943 and 1944, so that at least dates the rangefinder conversion.
