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Kalos

The Kalos, named after the Greek word for beautiful, was manufactured by Kalos Kamerbau of Karlsruhe in 1950. Like the HIT style cameras of Japan and the Petie the Kalos uses un-perforated paper backed roll film. The film is 16mm and has a negative size is 9x12mm, giving 30 exposures on the roll. It has "Mikro-Anastigmat f4.5 2cm" engraved on the lens surround, f4.5 and f6.3 lever on the top and and shutter speeds of B, 1/30, 1/50 and 1/100s slider underneath. The body is cast aluminium and is either polished bare metal or has a painted 'silver' finish. Another difference noted is in the window used to view the film count on the backing paper.

Unlike Mycro film, or film used with the Merlin, Coronet or Petie the film winder is part of the spool. There has been more than one type of winder dial seen.

The hard brown case, shown in the photograph above, is unmarked, but the contours match that of the camera. The blue case is a perfect fit, but may not have been made for this camera.

Kalos Special

In 1960 a more advanced model was launched. It is similar to the Petitux IV, which was possibly also made by Kalos Kamerbau for Kunik. The Kalos Special has a focusing f2.8/25mm lens, the same as used on the Petitiux. The shutter can be set from 1/2 to 1/125s by a dial on the side of the body. The lens surround adjusts the aperture from f2.8 to f16.  The shutter release is connected to the film winder and prevents double exposures. It also has a cable release socket. The window to view the current frame number has also gone, being replaced by a film counter beneath a small window on the top of the camera.  Possibly because of the collaboration with Kunik the negative size is 14x14mm.

There are reports of a 28mm f2.8 lens, shutter speeds from 1 second to 1/250th and that the viewfinder has parallax correction.

Kalos Articles

 PhotoDeal 14 / Ausgabe III/96 *2004/02/08 4.50EUR