Taron 35

History has a sense of humour and good timing. In 2020, I wrote about the Taron Chic, and while looking online, I was swamped with data about a wunderkind, one Taron Egerton, who starred in the Kingsman movies. Four years later, the same Taron is now on everybody’s lips with Netflix’s Carry-On.

Now, after doing the rebranded Taron under the Hanimex name, I pulled out three other Taron rangefinders, and the Taron 35 is the first of the lot.

Quoting from my earlier page, Taron was a short-lived post-war Japanese manufacturer that sold cameras under its name as well as made cameras for other distributors, such as Hanimex, Fodor, Sears, Brumberger, Amica, Porst, Viceroy, Boots and BA camera, and served their NKS shutters for brands such as Mamiya, Fujica, Topcon, and Tougodo.

Taron made its first camera, the Taroflex TLR, in the early 1940s and paused for a decade. Then, it mainly made compact rangefinders and viewfinders until it caved out in the late 1960s. All of the Taron models I have require CPR, and perhaps the poor build quality was the reason for the company’s early demise. collection-appareils.fr also suggests a compact SLR, which does not appear anywhere else. The Taron cameras bear a strong resemblance to models made by Royal cameras, which were made at the same time. Perhaps there was a cooperation between the two.

The Taron 35 was the first 35mm rangefinder made once they resumed production after the war. The camera looks like many other cameras of the era, as if there were decreed design lines by a higher authority.

This model was followed by a similar camera, with an added self-timer and a different lens, commonly named the Taron 35 II. The two models are marked the same as Taron 35. Since they are similar models and no reference to the 35II is ever found, I allow both models in this article. See the table below for details.

Next came the style-refreshed Taron 35 III, marked as Taron MX, and thereafter, a bunch of recycled models. See the Hanimex page for details.

The Taron 35 is a straightforward camera with no fancy attributes and is easy to use.

• On top is the lever winder with an incorporated manual reset frame counter, adjusted by a serrated ring in the middle. A red lens next to it turns red once the shutter is cocked.
• The rewind knob is surrounded by a film-type memo, including an ’empty’ position, just in case you want to shoot with no film.
• The vewier is large and bright, no parallax marks and smallish rangefinder patch.
• The lens assembly has the focusing dial closest to the body, marked in feet, being a US market model.
• Next is the aperture dial, with a synch selector X/M next to it and the self-timer on the same ring, at the bottom.
• The shutter speed dial is at the front.
• All dials are easy to grasp, which is uncommon in that era of cameras.
• The shutter is Taron’s own NKS, which was supplied to other camera makers.

For the collector, it is a nice camera to have, being the first of the Taron models. A good, usable one can be an easy-to-use film shooter.