Mamiya Prismat (1961)

Name: Mamiya Prismat
Brand: Mamiya

The Mamiya Prismat NP, released in February 1961, was Mamiya's first production 35mm SLR. Mamiya was then far better known for medium-format cameras like the C-series TLRs. The lineage is unusual. The body is shared with the Nikkorex F, which Mamiya built for Nikon with a standard Nikon F mount a year later. The Prismat NP itself used an Exakta-style bayonet mount, and early examples are identifiable by a distinctive curved nameplate on the front of the prism housing.

The lenses are the odd part of the story. Some NP examples were fitted with Canon OM lenses in Exakta mount, reportedly the only Canon lens ever mounted on a Mamiya 35mm body. The collaboration seems to have been brief and is not well documented. The standard lens for the NP was a Mamiya-Sekor F.C. 58mm f/1.7. The shutter was a horizontally-traveling cloth focal-plane type with FP and X sync terminals. There is no built-in meter. Later variants include the Prismat PH, which swapped the cloth shutter for a Seikosha-SLV behind-the-lens leaf shutter (1 to 1/500) and added a selenium-cell meter on the fixed prism. The 1963 Prismat CPH offered speeds from 1 second to 1/1000.

The Prismat family was also sold under other names. Sears sold it as the Tower 32A, and it appeared as the Tower 34A. Period pricing for the family sat around $200 in 1962. Today, a working Prismat NP with a Canon FD lens typically sells in the $55 - $155 range, though complete kits are scarce. High Fidelity never covered it, of course. Camera-period sources like Photography Dictionary (via its modern archive) confirm the family pricing and the CPH's shutter range.

Surviving documentation is thin. No production end date, no weight or dimensions, and no original U.S. price for the NP specifically are recorded. What is clear: the Prismat was Mamiya’s first step into 35mm SLRs, an odd but historically significant detour that briefly entangled Mamiya, Nikon, and Canon in a single camera body.

Type: 35mm SLR, interchangeable lens (Exakta-type mount)
First Mamiya 35mm SLR (NP released Feb 1961)
Standard lens: Mamiya-Sekor F.C. 58mm f/1.7 (NP)
Shutter: cloth focal-plane (NP); Seikosha-SLV leaf, 1–1/500 (PH); focal-plane, 1s–1/1000 (CPH)
Meter: none (NP); selenium-cell on fixed prism (PH)
Also sold as Sears Tower 32A / Tower 34A