Ricoh TLS 401

The Ricoh TLS 401 is camera-wiki’s successor to the Singlex TLS of 1967, and in most respects that camera with a new finder. It keeps the TLS’s M42 screw mount, its Copal Square metal focal-plane shutter running 1 second to 1/1000, its stop-down CdS meter and its round shutter-speed dial on the front of the body. What changed is on top. Ricoh replaced the glass pentaprism with a hollow pentamirror moulded in plastic, cheaper and lighter by its own account, and used the empty space inside to fit a switching mirror. A knob on the side of the housing, marked EL and WL, sends the image either to the normal eyepiece at the back or to a second eyepiece on top, so the same camera can be used at the eye or looking down. Margetts notes that the waist-level view is the right way round. Ricoh’s own camera library calls it the world’s first SLR with a two-way finder, and says the plastic pentamirror had first been used on its 126C Flex cartridge SLR. Japanese buyers got it as the Ricohflex TLS401 in October 1970: ¥57,500 with an f/1.4 lens and ¥47,500 with an f/1.8, both Ricoh list prices. Camera-wiki cites a TLS 401 advertisement in Modern Photography for May 1970, which would mean it was advertised in America before the Japanese release.

The meter adds a choice of pattern. Two CdS cells sit behind the semi-silvered main mirror, one reading the whole field and one a central spot, and a slider on the back of the top plate switches between them, marked Av and Sp. A pointer at the left of the finder shows which one is selected. Metering is stop-down: pushing up the switch on the side of the mirror box closes the lens to the taking aperture and turns the meter on. The instruction book adds a second contact that closes only when the film is wound, shown green or red in a small window, and warns that a camera left wound with the main switch on drains the cell. The cell is a 1.35V mercury EPX625 or RM625R. Exposure is set by centring a needle at the lower right of the finder. The flash has separate X and M sockets and no hot shoe, and electronic flash synchronises at 1/30 to 1/125.

There is only one version. The changes over the camera’s life were to the kit lens, not the body. Ricoh’s list names the Rikenon 55mm f/1.4 and prices a kit with an f/1.8. The English instruction book covers the f/1.4 and the f/1.7 and carries a note that a 55mm f/2.8 was now offered with the camera, with nothing else changed. Camera-wiki gives the standard lens as the Auto Rikenon 55mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.7 or 55mm f/2.8, depending on the camera’s date. Any M42 lens fits. The book’s own list adds an automatic 35mm f/2.8 and 135mm f/2.8, preset 200mm f/4.5, 300mm f/5.5, 400mm f/6.3 and 600mm f/8 lenses, and a 90–190mm f/5.8 zoom. 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. In 1976 Ricoh turned the design into the export Singlex II, a cost-reduced TLS 401 with an ordinary prism and the speed dial moved to the top plate. Ricoh’s list calls the Singlex II’s metering open-aperture, but its instruction book describes stop-down metering, as on the TLS 401. Ricoh’s first K-mount bodies, the XR-1 and XR-2, followed in September 1977. John Margetts describes the TLS 401 as a descendant of the Nikkorex F: Mamiya, he writes, sold the design to Ricoh as the Singlex, which was refined into the Singlex TLS and then the TLS 401. Ricoh’s own account is narrower. Its list says the Nikon-mount Singlex of 1962 was bought in from a small Itabashi subcontractor that made Nikkorex F parts and was shipped only in sample quantities (aperturepreview names Mamiya as the maker), and it presents the Singlex TLS as the SLR Ricoh could build once Copal offered its metal focal-plane shutter unit; it does not describe the TLS as a development of the Singlex.

To identify one, look for the taller finder housing with an eyepiece on top, the EL/WL knob on its side and the speed dial on the front of the body. Ricoh’s identification note puts the knob on the left as you face the camera, which is the user’s right, and that is where camera-wiki and Margetts describe it. The Singlex TLS has a plain prism and the Singlex II has its dial on top. When buying, check that the change-over knob moves cleanly and both eyepieces show an image, since the switching mirror sits inside a plastic housing. Check that the meter needle responds in both Av and Sp. The meter was built for a mercury cell, so expect to use an adapter or a substitute. Margetts’s warning about the finder is worth reading before buying: the eye-level image is noticeably dimmer than a glass prism gives, and the waist-level image is small and heavily cropped, usable only with the eye pressed to it. A dealer listing says the body was available in black. No Ricoh source names a black body and no photographed example is on record, so no black version is listed. No production figure or serial-number table for the TLS 401 is known.