I have always had a strong interest in various OEM cameras and have collected a lot of such cameras. The Wards XE200 introduced today was produced by Japan for Montgomery Ward department store in the United States. Although the function of this machine is relatively simple, it is very suitable to take it out and play with it from time to time.
Montgomery Ward Department Store may be very unfamiliar to people who are not in the United States. At least I wouldn't know if I didn't look up the information on this XE200 camera. Montgomery Ward is known as the first department store to operate via mail order, just like another Sears company in the United States that sells photography equipment under Sears as its brand.
Montgomery Ward Department Store was founded in Chicago, USA in 1872, and sold various photography equipment under the Wards brand in the 1950s and 1990s, such as light meter , film, flash, lens, camera, etc. For example, the following mailing form for Wardway film service should be the service included with the film sold by the company.
Since the 1970s, Montgomery Ward department store has used its company's full name "Montgomery Ward" to replace "Wards" as a brand identity to sell photography equipment. The information I saw stated that among the photography equipment sold by Montgomery Ward Department Store, most of them are sold using the original brands and names of these equipment, and only a small part adopts the Wards brand.
Montgomery Ward department store itself should not produce cameras. Even cameras sold using the Wards (and later Montgomery Ward) brand were produced by other camera brands for the company, the most important of which is the Japanese Konics company. In addition to Konica, a small number of them are Japanese Taiyōdō (a camera that produces Beauty brand) and German Adox.
To be honest, I have not found any relevant information on which camera the prototype of the Wards XE200 I introduced today. However, according to my experience, this XE200 should also be a product of Konica, but I cannot be sure which product it is. If that fellow friend knows, please give me some advice, thank you!
The overall shape of the machine is very round, and it feels very comfortable to hold it in your hand and play with it. Just like the oval shutter (as shown in the figure below) button of the machine, the feel of pressing it is very good.
This machine is equipped with a 35/4 three-group four-piece wide-angle lens , but there is no specification or technical mark on the press ring of the lens. The aforementioned data is introduced in the original manual of the machine.
is the Selenium Cell of the machine around the lens. The reason why I must be selenium metering is because the machine has no place to install batteries, and the only thing that can measure the light without batteries is selenium. The advantage of selenium light metering is that it does not require additional batteries to power the metering system, but the disadvantage is that it is easy to age, especially under strong light. Therefore, there are not many selenium light meters that can react to different lights now, and the accuracy is even more unsupported.
The shutter system of this machine is not marked. The shutter speed is automatically determined by the camera's light metering system according to the shooting environment. Just set the A/M (auto/manual) selection gear in Figure 1 below in "A" gear. As long as the pointer in the metering display window on the top of the set is in the white area (Figure 2 below), it means that the camera can perform correct automatic exposure. However, if the metering pointer is in the red area on the left, it means that there is insufficient light and a flash is needed to shoot. When you need a flash, you need to select the "M" gear in Figure 1. Although this Wards XE200 is for estimating the focus distance, it can be judged by only one window at the camera's eyebrow mark. However, the view window of the machine is very bright and it is very comfortable to framing, which is one of the reasons why I like the machine.
Another reason why I like this machine is naturally the knurled design on the knob of the body. Especially when the machine's over-chip knob turns, the "click, click" sound is simply so nice. Of course, this can only be said to be "who can listen to it"!
When I got this Wards XE200 rangefinder camera in my hand, I brought the original lens cover (although there is no brand and origin logo), the original instruction manual and the outer packaging carton.
This camera was bought in eBay, the price is US$22.64 if it does not count the international shipping fee.
Author: Zhang Yi
