Kowa Six MM

I took the Kowa to London on a trip once, and London knew. Kowa doesn't hesitate to announce its presence, wherever it goes. (Which is a polite way of saying it's loud.)

My back knew too, since I foolishly lugged three all-metal lenses together with the all-metal body. And a Konica Hexar but methinks it was the lightest of the load.

Dubbed 'the poor man's Hasselblad' (I wouldn't know, to this day I still haven't handled a Hasselblad), this is a very decent example of the brilliant things Japanese camera industry could come up with. The Kowa is a compact (well, as these things go) 6x6 shooter with interchangeable lenses and multiple viewing accessories. I had bought a whole suitcase full of its dedicated equipment. The camera looks very serious with all the levers and knobs. Like you could bonk someone on the head with it, if it came to that. Luckily for me (and the potential unfortunate fellow), it never did. 

My dad who helped me get it from the US where he had lived at the time, took the photo of the whole gear when it arrived. I've lost my own photos of it in a disc crash, sadly.

I sold it since, because it was simply much too heavy for me, but I remember it being nice, albeit a bit stiff to handle. The lenses are excellent. 

I will one day add more photos from it, the aforementioned London trip was quite abundant in pretty shots, but for now, here are a couple random pictures to show the camera's ability (and some of my own, too). It may come as a surprise with the usual content of the blog, because I usually test my cameras in the field, taking simple snapshots or attempting to do street photography, but in my real life as a photographer, I used to take a lot of portraits. I included some here.

Kowa Six on camera wiki
Manual from Butkus

some portraits

my parents

some vidotchkis and others