This camera reminds me of a high-class toy camera in terms of feel and look. It has a metal top, bottom and lens casing, but somehow still looks plastic.

It was produced around 1973 in Hong Kong by the Haking company and seems to be the same as the Halina Paulette II. The lens is an f2.8 45mm lens that is focused manually by estimating the distance to the subject. The viewfinder is fairly large and bright but has no information regarding the camera settings. The speed and aperture have to be set manually. The top speed is 1/250th so it is very toy-like in that respect too. You can read some more technical details here…not that there are many.

I loaded my example with a roll of Ilford FP4 and took it to a few places.

I used my phone as a light meter at each place, but the whole film was overexposed by 1 or 2 stops. So if I use it again I would have to take that into account. Another thing I noticed was the framing. In two of the photo, the sculptured totems, I definitely framed it in the middle and had the top of the sculpture in the frame. The resultant photo has a large portion of the left missing making them off centre. You can also see this in the photo of the 53 building, I am sure I put the number in the middle of the frame. Like another camera I tried recently, there is also a kind of reflection line running along one edge.

I did enjoy using the camera, but the framing and overexposure tainted my overall view of my example. I am not sure I will use it again as I have other cameras I prefer.