You're a reporter in the US in the twentieth century and you're wondering what kind of camera you should get. Actually, you don't have to. Graflex. Done, solved.

The USSR, the land of mud and wooden spoons, also produced its only line of wooden cameras, FKD, for several decades (I feel in my bones that the acronym means something, but I haven't looked up what).

Today we're going to talk about brass and aluminium. This lens is made of brass and aluminium. We've done our education on the materials side of things, and now we're going to please the linguists - it's a Hugo Meyer Atelier Schnellarbeiter 310mm f3, which the translator peculiarly translates as "fast worker."

There were many lenses for aerial photography. A lot of them. Some companies switched to their production in times of need from other, related fields, for example from the production of binoculars (the case of British Aldis). They were also produced under license - often they weren't even signed and could only be recognized by serial number or...

Just as there was times when radioactive substances were put into everything from medicines, foods and drinks (Marie-Curie gives it a thumbs down), so too did the manufacturers of optics (but here it had a positive effect, Jiří Zouhar gives it a thumbs up).

What better way to start than with one of the most legendary lenses in history, first introduced all the way back in 1900? The name Heliar is such a prized family heirloom that it has survived to this day and is still in production - though now for digital cameras (I am crossing myself). However, it must be...