Camera - Koni-Omega Rapid 100

Not a Konica camera. Watch the nylon strap. I was relying on the strap when it gave way and hit the street like a brick, which is how heavy this camera is.

Interesting camera. I had never seen this model before.

That was a great camera, and the Konica lenses are fantastic! Love your camera collection! Want to buy a Werra with lenses and filters?

I just received one of these wonderful cameras with the 90mm lens, a 60mm lens, and a 180mm lens! Already testing with Ektar 100 film. Thanks for the nice “how to”

I have the granddaddy of this camera, a Simmons Omega 120, same film transport mechanism but no dark slide and no interchangeable lens. It's my lightest and favorite carry-around medium format camera. I've been tempted to try out the koni omega line for the interchangeable lenses (I hear are of excellent quality), thanks for a great video, great explanations!

Thanks for the interesting and detailed story about this camera. I still have a question how to set the sensitivity of the loaded film?

Pretty nice demonstration of the complexities of this line of cameras. The major omission concerns the variety of models made and the significant differences between them. In summary, the camera concept started with Omega in the US (the enlarger folks), who got an Army contract during WWII to produce a medium format heavy-duty roll film camera. At the time, all government photography was shot with sheet film, Graflex-like cameras. Omega made a fixed lens camera of this style, but by then the war was practically over, so few went to the Army. Omega tried selling them after the war, but they are so unique and ugly that few sold. Skip forward a decade, and Omega revived the concept working with Konica, which produced the first Koni-Rapid. It looks a lot like the camera here, but it has unique design points. It was fairly successful, so Konica redesigned the camera, producing a version with improved handle, different film back, etc. That was modified later to add a mid-roll interchangeable film magazine version, the Koni-Omega Rapid M. (My favorite) Around 1970(?), 35mm was eating into sales for professional work, so Konica sold the legal rights, parts, and production tools to Mamiya. Mamiya continued to make the most complex model as the Rapid Omega 200 (dropping the "Koni"). As sales slowed, Mamiya produced the Rapid 100, the camera shown here. It drops the interchangeable film magazine but uses the later film back, lowering its price. Actually, there were five lenses for the cameras, all lenses fitting all models. There was a 60mm (Angulon-copy 6 element), replaced by an improved 58mm (Super Angulon-copy 8 element) after a few years. The standard was a 90mm (Tessar copy), and a 180mm (Tele-Xenar copy, I think). Finally, a 135mm copy of the Zeiss Sonnar, quite rare and expensive when found. There is an ongoing confusion whether after selling to Mamiya, Konica continued making the lenses for Mamiya to rebrand, or Mamiya made its own copies of the lenses.

I tripped over this video again and was amused by the number of small technical errors in the rolling description of the camera. Example: The film pressure plate is not deployed to flatten the film when you press the shutter release as stated. (That would require huge release pressure.) It's natural, default position is to fully pressure the film flat. When you start pulling out the film advance lever, it cams the pressure plate back to release the film; when you push it in again, it cams the pressure plate back in place.
None of these errors would adversely impact its basic use. It marks this video as one of those made by someone just to meet YT requirements for posting something, someone who has never used the camera and prepared the presentation by summarizing the meager and erroneous information in YT in videos posted by others.
Note that he never discusses loading film in the film back. I'll guess that is because he never has, or having tried, failed. The film backs are deceptively simple, just install the film roll and take-up spool and off you go (?) Well, you have to advance the paper leader to an index mark so once in the camera, the film end starts at the right place. And that is the rub. The backs have their index marks all over the place, often in obscure locations, hard to locate. And, you cannot use the pull-push rapid advance lever to advance to the index, or you trigger the auto-stop mechanism which locates each frame in the camera, throwing the whole process out of whack. Once you get the hang of it for your specific backs, it's a no-brainer, but getting to that point would have been worthy of its own video.

While I’m not intimately informed about every press camera ever made, the dark slide holder is a feature I’ve not seen on any other camera, which seems like either an enormous oversight or a patented feature that they refused to license ;-)

Interesting beastie, thanks for demo-ing it

Mamiya and Olympus cameras are my 2 favorite film cameras from the 60's through 80's

I bought one of these in excellent condition with the handle and the shutter release cable and 90mm for a $100. I’m still surprised that they are so cheap. The 90mm is phenomenal. Sadly I haven’t shot mine in about a year.

One other thing to mention is, the lenses have built in lens shades, and when pulled out provide you with the DOP scale.

If you had to decide between one of these and a Mamiya TLR with interchangeable lenses for the same price, which do you think you’d go for? Assuming this was your only medium format camera