If all your photography practice has been in the digital era, you may not know that Fujifilm had a very productive ‘previous life’ as the maker of film cameras. Of course, the company started out making film – for both photography and cinematography – but in 1948, it introduced its first camera, a 6x6cm ‘folder’ called the Fujica Six. The Fujica brand was derived from Fuji Camera and remained in use until the mid-1980s.
The company introduced its first 35mm camera in 1957, a rangefinder design called the Fujica 35M. Subsequently, there was a steady stream of developments introduced in successive models, culminating in 1962 with the Fujica 35mm Auto-M, which was the world’s first 35mm camera with programmed exposure control. During the 1970s and ’80s, Fuji was very much…