Mamiya Six IV

History

Mamiya Camera Co. was founded in 1940 by Seiichi Mamiya and Tsunejiro Sugawara, with the original Mamiya Six as the company's first product. The folding Six line ran through at least four recognized variants over approximately 15-18 years, with incremental refinements to construction, shutter specification, and lens coating as Japanese optical manufacturing recovered and modernized after the Second World War.

The Six IV, introduced around 1955, represents the culmination of this line. By the mid-1950s, Mamiya's commercial attention was shifting: the Mamiya C (twin-lens reflex, 1956) would soon define the company for the professional market, and the folding-camera segment was declining globally as 35mm cameras grew in popularity. The Six IV was not replaced within the folding Six family; it marks the end of that lineage. The name "Mamiya 6" would not appear again until the 1989 Mamiya 6 MF, an entirely different rangefinder design with interchangeable lenses.

Why It Matters

The Mamiya Six IV is the closing chapter of Mamiya's founding camera line, making it of clear interest to collectors tracing the company's history. As a shooting camera, it offers:

• A compact, collapsible 6x6 form factor that fits in a coat pocket when closed
• A capable 75mm Lausar lens with adequate sharpness for medium enlargements and scanning
• A fully mechanical, battery-free operation
• A coupled rangefinder for accurate focus wide-open

Its prismatic rangefinder design is the most technically distinctive feature of the Six series. Where most contemporaries used a separate eyepiece for the rangefinder and a separate window for the viewfinder, Mamiya's prism arrangement combined these into a single optical path — unusual for the price class in which the Six competed.

For 2026 film photographers, the Six IV is a relatively affordable path to 6x6 on a compact folder. It is cheaper and more compact than a Rolleiflex TLR, and gives a coupled rangefinder that many German folders of similar price lacked. The main limitation is the non-interchangeable lens: there is only one focal length available, and the lens cannot be changed or adapted.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• Mid-1950s Japanese enthusiast and professional photographers working in a compact medium-format form factor.
• Primarily of collector and historical interest today.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Mamiya Six
• Wikipedia: Mamiya