The Olympus Chrome Six is a series of folding cameras made by Takachiho and later

Olympus Olympus or Olympos ( grc, Ὄλυμπος, link=no) may refer to: Mountains In antiquity Greece * Mount Olympus in Thessaly, northern Greece, the home of the twelve gods of Olympus in Greek mythology * Mount Olympus (Lesvos), located in Les ...

from 1948 to 1956, for 6×4.5 or 6×6 exposures on

120 film 120 is a film format for still photography introduced by Kodak for their '' Brownie No. 2'' in 1901. It was originally intended for amateur photography but was later superseded in this role by 135 film. 120 film survives to this day as the only ...

. In 1948, Olympus launched the Chrome Six I, an updated version of the Olympus Six of 1940Olympus Camera History
accessed 17 May 2008 and its first postwar release of a folding camera for 120 film. The cameras were produced at the Suwa Plant in

Nagano Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...

. They were packaged and shipped on the same day to camera stores in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. In 1951 Olympus launched the Olympus Chrome Six IIIA, a successor to the Olympus Chrome Six I. The camera had a film tensioner which held the film flat against the pressure plate,Sōichirō Matsuzaki (, ''Matsuzaki Sōichirō''), "Orinpasu kamera no subete 2: supuringu kamera " (, "All of Olympus cameras 2: folding cameras ostwar), ''Kamera Rebyū: Kurashikku Kamera Senka'' () / ''Camera Review: All about Historical Cameras'' no. 20, 25 March 1992, pp.16–8 ; Sōichirō Matsuzaki, "'Orinpasu kurōmu shikkusu' to sono koto domo" (, "About the 'Olympus Chrome Six'"), ''Kamera Rebyū: Kurashikku Kamera Senka'' () / ''Camera Review: All about Historical Cameras'' 76, June 2005 (), ''Kurashikku kamera katachi to kinō 'supuringu kamera hen''' (, special issue on spring cameras), pp.28–31 . the first implementation of this feature. The Olympus Chrome Six RIIA was launched four years later in 1955. It had a high-precision

rangefinder A rangefinder (also rangefinding telemeter, depending on the context) is a device used to measure distances to remote objects. Originally optical devices used in surveying, they soon found applications in other fields, such as photography an ...

(not coupled with the lens), and was the most advanced camera of the series.

Notes

Chrome Six {{camera-stub