This photo of my photoalbum was taken in Okinawa.

Graflex was a manufacturer, a brand name and several models of cameras. William F. Folmer, an inventor, built the first Graflex camera in 1898, when his company was called Folmer and Schwing. Founded originally in New York as a bicycle company, it had branched into making cameras, which then became its main business. That firm in 1905 was purchased by George Eastman. In 1907, the company became the Folmer and Schwing Division of Eastman Kodak. After a few more interim changes of status and name, it finally became simply "Graflex, Inc." in 1945. [sources: Kingslake; Hendersonville Camera Club]. Most sports photography in the early 20th century was done with Graflex and similar cameras with a cloth focal plane shutter. To get shutter speeds high enough to stop fast motion they had to use a narrow slit, which exposed different parts of the film at different times. The Graflex was an SLR that was viewed through a tall leather hood from above—not through a pentaprism. They were made for film formats from 2 1/4 * 3 1/4" (6 * 9 cm) up to 8 * 10", with the most popular being 4 * 5". To set the shutter speed, you wound up the shutter to one of a series of tensions with a key. Then you selected the slit width with another control. A table on the side of the box gave the shutter speed for each combination. Graflex Speed Graphic folding cameras, produced from 1912 to 1973, also have a focal plane shutter, although they are often used with a between-the-lens shutter mounted to the lensboard. Crown Graphic cameras are similar to their corresponding Speed Graphic cousins; however they are an inch thinner and about one pound lighter because they lack the focal plane shutter. However, because of the shorter lens-to-film plane distance, the Crown Graphic can use shorter lens focal lengths, allowing a wider field of view. So, many photographers made pictures with the wheels of cars leaning forward, because a top-to-bottom shutter motion exposed the bottom first. This feature became a conventional indication of speed. Cartoonists drew wheels the same way to indicate fast motion.

Zenit is a Russian (and formerly Soviet) camera brand manufactured by the KMZ factory (Krasnogorskiy Mekhanicheskiy Zavod) near Moscow since 1952 and by BelOMO in Belarus since the 1970s. The Zenit trademark is primarily associated with 35mm SLR cameras. Amongst related brands are Zorki for 35mm rangefinder cameras, Moskva (Moscow) for medium-format folding cameras and Horizon for panoramic cameras. The name is sometimes spelled Zenith in English literature, such as the manuals published by the UK Zenit-importers TOE. (However, TOE's imported camera bodies themselves retained the "Zenit" badges.)