C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The Pignons Bolca SP (c. 1942) is a 35mm single-lens reflex camera produced by Pignons S.A. of Ballaigues, Switzerland - the same small watchmaking-industry firm that would go on to manufacture the celebrated Alpa line. The Bolca SP is historically significant as one of the earliest 35mm SLRs to incorporate an eye-level pentaprism finder, predating the East German Contax S (1949) by several years. Whether this constitutes the first commercially available pentaprism SLR is contested in camera-historical literature, but the claim has been advanced by Pignons historians and is treated as credible.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
View profile →BW
Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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Labs in our directory that process 35mm film.
Before you buy used
The Bolca SP is effectively not a buyable camera in the normal collector market. Known surviving examples are vanishingly rare - fewer than a handful are confirmed in private hands outside of institutions. Any example that does surface should be treated with extreme caution:
About this camera
The Swiss pioneer SLR of 1942 that proved a pentaprism eye-level finder was workable - before the Contax S was a glimmer.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm |
| Mount | Fixed / early proprietary bayonet |
| Years | c. 1942 – ~ |
| Metering | None |
| Battery | None required |
| Shutter | Focal-plane: ~1s - 1/1000s + B |
| Flash sync | |
| Viewfinder | Pentaprism, eye-level |
| Focus aids | Ground glass |
Pignons S.A. was founded in Ballaigues in the Swiss canton of Vaud, a region with deep roots in precision watchmaking and mechanical instrument manufacture. In the late 1930s and into the war years, Pignons' director Jacques Bolsky directed engineering resources toward a 35mm SLR camera that would use a pentaprism to provide the photographer with an upright, laterally correct eye-level image - a fundamental problem with reflex cameras up to that point, which universally required the photographer to look down into a waist-level finder to see a reversed image.
The Bolca SP is believed to have emerged from this programme around 1942, though wartime conditions in neutral Switzerland meant production was extremely limited and documentation is sparse. The camera's engineering principles - pentaprism finder, focal-plane shutter, Swiss machined body - were carried forward directly into the postwar Alpa product line. The Alpa 4 (c. 1944) and subsequent Alpa numbering sequence represent the commercial evolution of the Bolca work.
The SP designation may stand for "Supra" or a variant designation within the Bolca range; primary sources for this nomenclature are limited to secondary Swiss camera-historical accounts.
The Bolca SP's importance is primarily historiographic. If the pentaprism priority claim is verified, it represents the solution to the central usability problem of the reflex camera - the reversed viewfinder image - before any commercially successful mass-market implementation. The pentaprism finder transformed the SLR from an awkward waist-level instrument into one usable at eye level in the manner of a rangefinder, enabling the form factor that would come to dominate professional photography for the next half century.
Even setting aside priority, the Bolca SP demonstrates that Swiss precision manufacturing in the early 1940s was capable of solving the pentaprism alignment and coating problems that the device requires. The continuity between Bolca and Alpa engineering is direct: the same firm, the same engineers, the same manufacturing philosophy. The Bolca SP is thus the root of one of the most respected precision camera lineages in European photographic history.
BW
Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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Kodak Ektar 100 is a fine-grain C-41 color negative film with saturated color and high sharpness.
View profile →Pignons Bolca SP
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