Taron Unique 35 mm rangefinder camera

This Taron Unique is the second Taron rangefinder camera I have recently bought, and is similar to the Taron Vr I posted about a couple of weeks ago. Because of some interesting accessories, this is a more extensive system than the Vr, however.

Table of Contents

Taron Unique Images

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera sync socket and focus arm

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera aperture and shutter speed

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera frame counter and film advance

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera film chamber

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera door release

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera add on lenses

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera film speed reminder

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera wide angle add on lens

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera telephoto add on lens

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera with aux lens and viewfinder fitted

Taron Unique add on lens focus calibration scale

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera with flash unit fitted

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera with viewfinder and aux lenses

Taron Unique 35mm rangefinder camera complete kit

My Taron Unique Camera

As I described in my other post on the Taron Vr, I’d not heard of the Taron make before I saw this camera in an eBay auction a couple of weeks ago.

It was in a complete rangefinder set with the camera, a couple of Taron flash units, a pair of add on adapter lenses offering wide angle and telephoto options and an external viewfinder which slides into the accessory socket. The whole set cost me about £15 and arrived a few days after the auction.

In the original advert the camera was described a faulty because the shutter wasn’t working, and sure enough when I first received it the shutter was completely locked shut.

Also, the frame advance lever was very stiff, particularly on the return stroke. Initially I didn’t have a lot of time to look at the camera and put it to one side, and by the time I got to look at it, I had already fixed the shutter on the Taron Vr, so I guessed this camera would be fixed in the same way and that proved to be the case. After I’d removed the front of the lens and applied a small amount of lighter fuel to the aperture blades, they sprang into life and have been fine since I’ve given them a clean. The frame advance lever is a little stiff still, but has loosened up a lot over the last couple of weeks by being used a few times every day.

Cosmetically, the camera is pretty clean, and all the other controls seem to work as expected. I can’t find any dings or dents, so I suspect the camera was looked after while in use, and then probably just stored in a cupboard for the last few years.

I was interested to look at the add-on lenses which came with this kit. They were packaged in a cylindrical leather case with the external viewfinder fitted between them. Both lenses screw onto the thread on the end of the camera’s lens and have focus scales marked on them to show how they affect the focus.

In fact, setting focus with one of the add-on lenses must have been a quite complex procedure. You first need to find the distance from the camera to the subject, then you need to look at the calibration scale on the lens and find what the camera needs to be focused to be correct for that distance, and set that on the distance scale. We are so used to seeing the image ‘through the lens’ these days (either optically or electronically) that we forget how complex some of this stuff must have been.