Spartus "35"

Welcome, again, to the wild world of forgotten photographic.... things. This week's photographic thing is the Spartus "35." From here on I will cease calling it the Spartus "35" for my own convenience, but I think it's kind of neat that in the style of graphic design from the 50s, it was normal to put things in quotes like that. You still see it from time to time, on some business slogans. To me in my whippersnapping ways, I always think it looks insincere, like the way people use air quotes to underline sarcasm. Also, sometimes I wonder who's supposed to be saying whatever's in quotes. I understand if a business has a slogan like "The best!" in quotes, but would "35" be simply quoting the person who named it? Curious, indeed...

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me so far. The Spartus 35 is one of many models made by Herold manufacturing in the 40s and 50s, including the Spartus 35 F, the Herold 40, and others. There seems to be a lot of confusion, also, over which model is which, some people calling the Spartus 35 F just a 35, and calling this guy a model 400. After a bit of research, I'm pretty sure this is the real deal, the straight up Spartus 35 (or "35" if you prefer). Big deal, right?

Basically, Herold made a lot of cameras, and the company's previous owner made a bunch of similar cameras under different names around the same time, resulting in a bunch of cheap, simple cameras being produced. Today they are often treated as toy cameras. Hmm.... sounds familiar.

The Spartus 35 is manual, and as I said before, incredibly simplistic. It has zone focusing (there's no info about the lens or shutter), and the iris has 4 settings: bright, hazy, cloudy, and dull. There's actually a wheel that you turn, that has 4 different sized holes which you line up with your lens, in place of aperture blades. As you can see, it has a viewfinder window (which is quite dirty) and is mostly made out of plastic. It has a few other features that I don't understand (a switch for "T" and "I" as well as what looks like an input of somekind), but overall it's pretty bare bones.

I find this camera interesting because in so many ways, it is just like a Lomo camera. It's simple and cheap and its lens even takes pictures that look characteristic of those Diana cameras... Some are very soft and milky. Yet, this camera cost 5 dollars, while your cheapest Lomo is still probably at least $40.

For a laugh and some more photos check out this account of the Spartus 35 and its manual... it'll make you chuckle and maybe explain a bit more about Herold Manufacturing.

Here are some shots for you!

xoxo
Caity