OPL Foca Sport II

Classic Fixed Lens Rangefinders:

O.P.L. Foca Sport II

by Karen Nakamura

Overview and Personal Comments

The first Foca Sport came out in 1954. It was designed as a simple point-and-shoot version of the more complex Foca PF rangefinders. Unlike the PF, the Sport had only a simple viewfinder with no rangefinder, an in-lens leaf shutter, and non-interchangeable lens.

The Sport was replaced by the Sport II, which added back the coupled rangefinder. This made the Sport considerably more useful.

Technical Details

Camera Name	Foca Sport	Foca Sport II
Manufacturer	Optique et Précision de Levallois (OPL)
Place of Manufacture	France
Date of Manufacture	1954-	1961-62
Focusing System		Coupled rangefinder Combined rangefinder/viewfinder
Lens	Foca Neoplar 45mm f/3.5	Foca Color Oplar 45mm f/2.8
Shutter	Leaf shutter B, 1 sec - 1/300 sec
Metering System	none
Flash	Standard PC sync on front
Film type / speeds	Type 135 (35mm standard) film 24x36mm full frame
Battery type	none
Dimensions and weight
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About OPL

Optique et Précision de Levallois (OPL) was founded in 1923 to produce optical instruments for aviation, marine, and military purposes. They set about in 1938 to make a camera, based roughly on the wildly popular Leica rangefinder. The war and German occupation intervened with those plans, but by 1942 the Germans encourage the release of the the FOCA rangefinder system. They produced cameras well up to the late 1950s, releasing the SLR FocaFlex in 1959, which featured innovative TTL metering.

On the Net

CameraShopper: Foca PF*** page
French sites:
- OPL Foca site (excellent resource)
- Foca PF**
- Foca Pricelist
FocaFlex (1959) photo

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