Ricoh Singlex II

The Singlex II is Ricoh’s plainest screw-mount reflex, released in August 1976 for export only, with the American market chiefly in mind. Ricoh’s own account is frank about the reason for it: an export camera had to win on price more than on features, so the company took the Ricohflex TLS 401, dropped its convertible waist-level and eye-level finder for an ordinary fixed pentaprism, and cut the cost. What remained was the Copal Square vertical metal shutter that Ricoh had bought in since the Singlex TLS of 1967, running from 1 s to 1/1000 s with electronic-flash sync at 1/125 s. A hot shoe sits on the prism, with X and M sockets on the body.

The one visible change Ricoh points to is the shutter dial. Ricoh says cameras built around the Copal Square had mostly carried it on the front of the body, as the Singlex TLS does. The Singlex II moves it to the top plate, where cloth-shutter cameras had it, and sets the film speed inside the same dial. Ricoh’s identification note calls it a very ordinary SLR shape with a lot of bright trim, the most chrome-glossy of SLRs, which is as good an identifier as any alongside the name Singlex II and the speed dial on top.

Metering is the point to get straight. Ricoh’s own page calls it open-aperture metering. The camera’s instruction book says otherwise and is the better witness: two CdS cells behind the prism read through the lens, and the reading is taken by pressing the front button that doubles as the depth-of-field preview, stopping the lens down while you turn the aperture ring to centre the needle. It is a stop-down match-needle camera, like the Singlex TLS before it, and camera-wiki and a user’s report agree. The meter runs from one 1.35 V mercury cell (the instruction book names the Mallory RM625 and Eveready EPX625), so with any substitute cell the readings should be checked against another meter. Ricoh’s page and the instruction book also disagree on the weight: 720 g on the page, 780 g in the book.

Any 42 mm screw lens fits, and the instruction book says so. Ricoh named no fixed standard lens; the manual lists the Auto Rikenon 55mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.7, 50mm f/2 and 50mm f/2.8, and Everything Vintage paired its body with the 50mm f/2 as a typical choice. Auto Rikenons have an auto/manual switch on the lens: on Auto the diaphragm stays open for viewing and closes at release or when the meter button is pressed. The Auto Rikenon EE lenses made for the Auto TLS EE also fit: set to a marked aperture, they meter stop-down like any other Auto Rikenon, and their EE setting gives shutter-priority automation only on the Auto TLS EE. Ricoh describes the Singlex II, the SLX 500 of 1975 and the Auto TLS EE alike as low-priced cameras planned for export. Ricoh’s list dates the Auto TLS EE to 1976, but American magazines had it on sale by mid-1973. They were Ricoh’s last M42 bodies, and in 1977 Ricoh moved to the Pentax K bayonet with the XR-1 and XR-2.

When buying, check the Copal Square shutter at every speed and the slow speeds in particular. Check that the needle moves when the button is pressed with a fresh cell, that the battery contacts are clean, and that the meter responds when the aperture ring is turned. Look for desilvering in the prism and for worn light seals around the back. No Sears or other rebadged Singlex II is on record, so a body with a different name on it is probably a different camera.