It’s December!! Where we now refer to days as “sleeps before” and far too much chocolate is eaten…says nobody ever! And for me it is a Konica Kristmas. All posts by me before the special day will be Konica based for no other reason than I CAN.

So I will start with a camera that was given to me because I have been very good this year. It was given to me by a friend who is moving away from Manchester to a distance and culturally different location. In this netherworld, he didn’t want to take any superfluous items. So he offered me two cameras, this was one of them. I happily said yes please and bade farewell to my friend. Who knows what will happen to him in…Southampton dun dun duuuuurh!!!

All joking aside, I was very happy to receive this one as I had been looking for another Konica to replace the fully automatic FP-1. That way I could make better use of the lens I kept it after selling this camera. When my friend handed over the TC it had the exact same lens attached. I was honest and said I already had it and it was super. I suggested he should keep it, maybe he could attach it to another body or a digital camera.

Once home I attached my own lens and loaded some Kodak BW400CN. Then I went to a couple of local parks, one on a fairly foggy day. All done before the last lockdown of course.

The TC works in manual or speed priority mode, no aperture mode. Inside the viewfinder is a needle display showing the aperture the camera has selected. As you can see from the photos, I powered mine with a couple of hearing aid batteries with washers on them to make them fit. As the film was slightly expired, I decided to shoot it at 300asa instead of the boxed value. I had previous used a sister film and it seemed slightly under when that one was developed so I thought this would help. I also checked the exposure reading given by this camera with another and going one stop under seemed to match that reading. While playing with it, I found that pressing the shutter half-way also acted as an exposure lock, handy.

AND…while researching this camera I found it was sold in Japan as the acom-1 which I had already tried. This new to me TC was the same except for the weird back on the acom I tried. I prefer the TC version without that, plus this one’s light meter still worked…score, thanks mate!

One thing I did like on this camera was the fact that it turned on by pulling out the wind on lever. There is also a button under that to retract the lever. This saves the battery power draining. On the Acom I tried, it didn’t work and I mentioned it was superfluous, so it was nice to see a working version.

The TC was produced from 1976 to 1982 and was probably not as successful as it should have been. That may be due to the fact, as this review says, it has the barest of features and was made with a fair amount of plastic. I have to say I really enjoyed using it and I am glad to have somewhere to put my 50mm hexanon lens….and that was written before I suddenly had an influx of Konicas, hence the Konica Kristmas.

Once my film was returned from the ever present Photo Hippo, I was really pleased with the results.

What a smashing little camera! Every shot was perfectly exposed.

Here is someone else who also likes this camera. He is right, it is a nice, cheap camera with access to great lenses.

Konica, Konica, Konicas rock
Konica flap and Konicas snap
Capture the bokeh and bushels of fun
The Konica time has begun

🙂 (sorry, couldn’t resist)