The Landers B35

The Cool and Quiet Street Shooter

Inspiration:

Unlike with my other cameras, where I started with an idea to explore a technical challenge or build a camera around a lens I found, this camera was built from the ground up with a specific shooting style in mind.

Ever since I started making cameras, I’ve been trying to get further and further away form the tripod. Each camera I make gets smaller, lighter, and faster. My shooting style requires movements and speed. The ability to capture the an image at the decisive moment.

My earlier cameras were large and bulky. their operation was impossible to understand unless you had knowledge on the function of the cameras.

For this camera, I wanted something that anyone could use, and easy enough to operate that I could take a photo with a seconds notice. This drove me to conform to some norms found in camera design.

But like the Leica M6, it isn’t enough to just be a technically good camera. I wanted this thing to look good!

I have a deep love of horology, or the art of watch and clock making. The techniques used to build the internal components of this camera were found in the pages of old watchmaking books.

So, I decided that the styling of this camera would be based on traditional clock making.

The Build:

The build took about 4 months and used a large variety of classic hand tools, manual machines and a few components made with CNC.

The bulk of the build was focused on the various shafts, gears and cams that advance the film and wind the shutter. High levels of precision were required, and many parts were machined and then brought into final fit with hand tools.

The build consist of over a hundred hand made parts. This includes gears, springs, cams, and shafts.

Shooting with the Landers B35

The camera performs extremely well on the streets of New York. As someone who has zone focused for so long, having a rangefinder when needed is a nice addition. And a lever operated film advance is a huge upgrade over my previous medium format cameras that had a viewing window for film advancement.

The small size means I can take it with me everywhere and the leaf shutter is quiet enough that I can take a photo in close proximity to someone or in a quiet room with nobody knowing.

This camera lends itself perfectly to the fast shooting style I so love with other cameras such as the Leica M6 or Contax G2, with a styling that people find very exciting.