Me and My Koni

Actually, I'm just posing with a Koni-Omega Rapid M camera that we had on the shelf at Stansbury Photo. I'd say this is in 1970.

I don't remember ever using the Koni, but it was a favorite of wedding and event photographers in the 60's and early 70's. It used 120 or 220 roll film, for 10 or 20 2-1/4" x 2-3/4" negatives per roll. It was very robust, built like a tank, and in a pinch, you could swing it to use as a formidable weapon. Besides all that, it had excellent, interchangeable lenses available. To top it off, each lens has its own leaf shutter, like the Hasselblad 500, which means flash synch up to 1/500 sec. For event photography, it was much cheaper than the Hasselblad and far easier to use.

I found this historic photo today while going through hundreds of old family photos, in an effort to organize them.

When I was in college, I worked summers and holidays at Stansbury Photo in Reisterstown Plaza. The owners, Mr. & Mrs. Ehrenzweig, treated us boys as family. It was a pleasure to work there, and I learned a lot.

This photo is probably from summer 1970. The cheapest SLR we sold back then was the Praktica Nova 1B from East Germany. I noticed when I held it up to my ear and fired the shutter, it would go sproooiiiinnnggg instead of a more solid thunk like the Pentaxes, Canons, and Nikons. We loved making fun of the Pratica, and I had one of my comrades snap this photo of me being a wise-guy.

Ironically, many years later when I got back into photography, I bought and used several later-vintage Prakticas. The later models, from the 1980's, particularly the MTL models, were about equal to a middling 1967 Japanese SLR, which is to say, perfectly good.