Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Rittreck 6×6 / Warner 66

Musashino Koki · Norita 66 mount · 56×56mm on 120 or 220 film, the pressure plate repositioned for 220 (Revue manual; Hayata Camera) · 1968

single source, unconfirmed via machine translation — corrections welcome

Also known as: Rittreck 6x6 · Rittreck 6×6 · Rittreck 6 x 6 · Rittreck Six · Rittreck 66 · Warner 66 · Warner 6x6 · Warner 6×6 · Warner Rittreck · Revue Rittreck Six · Revue Rittreck 6x6 · リトレック6×6 · リトレック 6x6 · リトレック・シックス · リトレックシックス · リトレック6 · リトレック66

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
Rittreck 6×6 (Japan, 1968) Norita 66 1968–1969 — No figure published. Topcon Club says Musashino made only a small number (わずかな台数) before handing the camera to Norita; Mike Eckman says it was made for one year.
Warner 6×6 / Warner 66 (export) Norita 66 — — —
Revue Rittreck Six (Foto-Quelle) Norita 66 — — —
  1. The ¥78,500 launch price comes from Hayata Camera alone. The only other price found is Modern Photography's $495 for the Warner 6×6 in December 1969; no German or later Japanese price was found.
  2. The Revue manual's 1.6kg includes the Rittron 80mm f/2 and the pentaprism; Modern Photography's '3 lb. 16 oz.' for the Warner does not say what it includes. No source gives a body-only weight, so the weight field is left empty.
  3. No production figure and no serial table is published; see the two body numbers under serial notes.
  4. Hayata Camera's 'Graphic 6×6' and collection-appareils' 'Graflex 6 X 6' each appear in one source only, and in no manual, advertisement or listing seen. The second may be a confusion with the later Graflex Norita; neither is treated as a variant.
  5. Hayata Camera says the JCII Camera Museum chose the Rittreck Six as one of Japan's historical cameras. The museum's own site search returns nothing for リトレック, so this is unconfirmed.
  6. collection-appareils reports advertisements for a 55mm wide-angle and 150, 200 and 300mm teles, the Revue manual says a 55–300mm range was in preparation, and Modern Photography (December 1969) says lenses from 55 to 135mm with automatic diaphragms and 200 and 300mm preset lenses 'will be available'. Only the Rittron 55, 80 and 160 are confirmed (Hagiya via English Wikipedia; Topcon Club).
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • Chrome top plate and chrome front around the mount over black leatherette = Rittreck, Warner or Revue; the Norita 66 is black all over (pentaconsix; photographs)
  • Round knurled dial with a red index line on the front plate beside the lens, on the shutter-release side: the mirror lock-up, which no Norita has (Topcon Club; Revue manual)
  • Lens engraved RITTRON, not NORITAR; on the 80mm f/2 the barrel is chrome and the stop-down ring sits behind the aperture ring, where the Noritar moved it nearer the mount (Topcon Club; pentaconsix). Weak on its own: the lenses interchange, and Modern Photography's December 1969 listing already names the standard lens '80mm f/2 Noritar or Rittron'
  • Inside the back: thin curved film springs set low on the take-up side and high on the supply side; the Norita's sit at mid-height, the take-up one with a small roller at its tip and the supply one broader (Topcon Club)
  • Screen with a plain central microprism, where the Norita's has a split microprism (Topcon Club; Japanese Wikipedia). Topcon Club adds that the Norita's screen has framing lines and the Rittreck's none; Japanese Wikipedia has it the other way round (see disputed)
  • Strap lugs at the front corners of both shoulders (Revue manual; photographs); pentaconsix says the early Norita had none, and Topcon Club says the lug position differs on the Norita
  • Not decisive: the four-position film-type ring for 120 and 220 in black-and-white and colour, and the N-D lever and pull-out N-D ring for double exposures, are also in the early Norita 66 manual, and Topcon Club says the pull-out ring is shared with the early Norita. Topcon Club reads the Rittreck's ring as 120-M, 120-C, 220-M, 220-C and says the Norita's shows only 120 and 220; the early Norita manual prints 120-BW, 120-C, 220-BW and 220-C. Topcon Club also says the N-D lever's length differs

Rittreck 6×6 (Japan, 1968):

  • 'Rittreck 6×6' in script on a framed plate on the front of the prism, and no other name on the camera's finder (Japanese Wikipedia's Wista article; front-view photograph in Mike Eckman's Norita article)
  • Chrome top plate and chrome front around the mount over black leatherette, with the round mirror lock-up dial on the front plate, as on every Rittreck-family body
  • Sold with the Rittron 80mm f/2 in a chrome barrel (pentaconsix; Hayata Camera)

Warner 6×6 / Warner 66 (export):

  • Prism nameplate reads 'warner' in lower case with a small emblem beneath it (Modern Photography, December 1969, reproduced on Mike Eckman's Keppler's Vault; the photograph in Eckman's Norita article, credited to fredmiranda.com)
  • Both photographed examples carry a RITTRON 80mm f/2 and the chrome Rittreck body with its mirror lock-up dial

Revue Rittreck Six (Foto-Quelle):

  • 'Revue' in script on the sloping front of the prism, above the usual 'Rittreck 6×6' plate (front-view photograph in the Revue manual)
  • '220' marked on the front of the shoulder on the shutter-release side in the same photograph; not seen on the Rittreck- or Warner-badged bodies photographed elsewhere, so possibly this one camera only

Serial-range notes

670049
Body number on the top plate beside the take-up knob, prefixed 'No', in the Revue manual's top-view photograph.
681772
Warner 6×6 body number on the top plate on the take-up side, as on the Revue, in Modern Photography's top-view photograph, December 1969, as the halftone reads. With the Revue's 670049 these are the only body numbers found; no range is published.

Specifications

Format
56×56mm on 120 or 220 film, the pressure plate repositioned for 220 (Revue manual; Hayata Camera) · 12 on 120, 24 on 220 (Revue manual) exposures
Finder (main)
removable pentaprism, eye-level · 87% coverage
Finder (alternative)
waist-level finder
Shutter
cloth focal plane ('Rollo-Schlitzverschluss', Revue manual) · B, 1s–1/500 (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500) · flash sync X setting on the speed dial gives 1/40; FP and X contacts. Electronic flash at X or at B to 1/15; FP bulbs at every speed except X and 1/30 (Revue manual)
Film advance
lever; two full strokes, or several short ones, until the counter engages; one stroke neither cocks the shutter fully nor moves the film (Revue manual). Hayata Camera: the second stroke is short; Modern Photography: 'a full throw plus a short throw', or a series of shorter throws
Back
hinged back, latch secured twice against accidental opening; pressure plate moved to one of two positions for 120 or 220; film-reminder dial on the back, ASA 12–1600 with black-and-white and colour marks (Revue manual)
Meter
none; the Revue manual says a TTL prism finder was in preparation, Modern Photography (December 1969) that there was no through-the-lens metering 'at least for the present', and no source shows one sold for the Rittreck
Dimensions
168 × 40 × 95 as printed in the Revue manual, with 1.6kg for the camera with the Rittron 80mm f/2 and pentaprism; no measurement of this camera can be 40mm, so one figure is misprinted. Modern Photography (December 1969) gives the Warner as 6⅞ in long, 4⅞ in high and 5 in deep (about 175 × 124 × 127mm) and its weight as '3 lb. 16 oz.', as printed mm
Country
Japan
Original price
¥78,500 with the Rittron 80mm f/2 at launch in March 1968 (Hayata Camera, one source). The Warner 6×6 was listed at $495 in the US in December 1969, with the 80mm f/2 in its specification (Modern Photography; importer Warner Products, Inc.) (today ¥305,000)
Accessories
Waist-level finder (Schachtsucher in the Revue manual) in place of the pentaprism · Accessory shoe, supplied separately (Aufsteckschuh, Revue manual) · TTL prism finder: announced as in preparation in the Revue manual; no source shows one sold for the Rittreck · Kilfitt and Zoomar lenses through Kilfitt's WERI camera mount, listed for 'Norita/Rittreck' by Patrice-Hervé Pont (cited by pentaconsix)

Fresnel screen with a central microprism and no framing lines (Topcon Club; the Revue manual says 'durch Fresnellinse voll ausgeleuchtet, Mikroraster'; Modern Photography 'central microprism'), where the Norita has a split microprism (Topcon Club; Japanese Wikipedia). Topcon Club gives 87% coverage, the same as the Norita, and finds the image close to life size with the standard lens on near subjects, slightly smaller at distance. The prism lifts off after the two buttons are slid towards the body (Revue manual).

The Revue manual names a Schachtsucher as the exchange for the prism; Hayata Camera says the camera can be used waist-level with the prism removed.

Figures we worked out rather than found: The years.last of 1969 is the year camera-wiki, citing Hagiya, gives for Musashino's bankruptcy, not a recorded last production date.

Where sources disagree

Last
  • 1969 — camera-wiki (Musashino page, citing Hagiya p.82): Musashino went bankrupt and production passed to Norita; camera-wiki's Rittreck page: 'In 1969, the manufacturer closed its doors'; lensretro and Mike Eckman also give 1969
  • No year — English Wikipedia (from Hagiya p.82) says only that Musashino 'decided to terminate production of this camera'
  • Somewhere in 1968–72 — Wista's own history: in those years manufacturing and sales were split and the sales company Rittreck Shōji set up; trouble with the lens maker over making and selling the Rittreck 6 led to a dissolution (解散, the text does not say of what), and Rittreck Shōji went on to make and sell everything but the Rittreck 6; Musashino took the Wista name in 1972
  • c.1969 to after 1970 — collection-appareils.fr, as its span of manufacture

Better supported: 1969

camera-wiki's Musashino page says in its opening line that the company 'closed its doors in 1972' and further down that it went bankrupt in 1969. No source dates the last Rittreck-badged body.

End of production (cause)
  • Bankruptcy — Hagiya, via camera-wiki; Japanese Wikipedia's Norita article (倒産); lensretro; Mike Eckman ('went bankrupt the year after the camera's release')
  • Musashino 'decided to terminate production', no cause given — English Wikipedia, citing Hagiya
  • Trouble with the lens maker over making and selling the Rittreck 6 — Wista's company history, repeated in Japanese Wikipedia's Wista article; Hayata Camera
  • Difficulty raising development funds, after which Norita, which had the prism and lens orders, bought the design — Japanese Wikipedia's Wista article
  • 'The complexity and success of the camera and the low price it sold for' caused financial problems, and Musashino sold its assets to Norita in 1969 — Mike Eckman

Wista does not name the lens maker. Hayata Camera says production passed to Norita, 'which had been supplying the lenses'; Norita is the only optical supplier named in any source.

Warner
  • A Rittreck-era export badge — Modern Photography, December 1969: the Warner is 'known as the Rittreck in Japan', made by Musashino Koki and imported by Warner Products, Inc.; both photographs (Rittron lens, chrome body); camera-wiki; pentaconsix ('Warner Rittreck'); Hayata Camera; the 1972 Photo Argus advertorial, which calls the Norita 66 derived 'from the Rittreck and the Warner' (collection-appareils translation)
  • An export name of the Norita 66 — lensretro.com ('Marketing into Europe followed, where the camera was branded the Warner 66', after the 1970 Graflex agreement); the opening of Mike Eckman's Norita article, whose own captions call it an export Rittreck

Better supported: A Rittreck-era export badge

Eckman's Keppler's Vault summary says the Modern Photography article suggests the camera was sold 'as a Rittreck in Japan and Norita elsewhere'; the article itself names only the Rittreck, though it lists the standard lens as '80mm f/2 Noritar or Rittron'.

Notes (framing lines)
  • The Rittreck screen has a central microprism and no framing lines, which the Norita added — Topcon Club, comparing the two
  • Norita omitted the in-finder frame when it made the Norita 66, implying the Rittreck had one — Japanese Wikipedia's Wista article

Better supported: Topcon Club

The Revue manual describes only a Fresnel screen with a microprism and mentions no lines.

Lenses for the Rittreck
  • Three Rittrons, 55mm, 80mm f/2 and 160mm, all made by Norita — Hagiya via English Wikipedia; Topcon Club
  • A 55mm and 150, 200 and 300mm teles in advertisements — collection-appareils.fr
  • A 55–300mm programme 'in preparation' — Revue manual
  • 55 to 135mm with automatic diaphragms plus 200 and 300mm preset lenses 'will be available', macro lenses planned, Zeiss and Schneider optics promised — Modern Photography, December 1969
  • 40mm to 400mm — Mike Eckman; 35 to 300mm — French Wikibooks

Better supported: Three Rittrons, 55mm, 80mm f/2 and 160mm

The 40mm and longer figures look like the later Norita range carried back; the Noritars do fit the Rittreck.

What reviewers say

History

The Rittreck 6×6 is a 6×6 single-lens reflex shaped like an enlarged 35mm SLR, made by Musashino Kōki, the maker of the Rittreck 6×9 reflexes and the Rittreck View, and sold in Japan from March 1968 at ¥78,500 with the Rittron 80mm f/2 (Hayata Camera). Rittreck Shōji, a trading company set up in 1968 by camera-wiki’s account and some time between 1968 and 1972 by Wista’s own history, distributed it. The optics were not Musashino’s own: Norita Kōgaku made the pentaprism and all three lenses, the Rittron 55mm, 80mm f/2 and 160mm (Hagiya, via English Wikipedia; Topcon Club). The Revue manual gives the specification: a cloth focal-plane shutter from 1 second to 1/500 and B, X sync at 1/40 through FP and X contacts, an instant-return mirror that can also be locked up, a removable pentaprism that exchanges for a waist-level finder, 56×56mm frames on 120 or 220 with the pressure plate moved to suit the film, an advance that takes two strokes, and 1.6kg with the standard lens and prism. Asahi Camera put it through its New Face column in April 1969.

It matters for two reasons. It put an eye-level, 35mm-shaped 6×6 SLR on the Japanese market more than a year before the Asahi Pentax 6×7 went on sale in July 1969 (Japanese Wikipedia), a point Topcon Club makes, and its 80mm f/2 was the fastest standard lens on any 6×6 SLR of its day (Hayata Camera; Japanese Wikipedia; Modern Photography in 1969). And it is the camera the Norita 66 was made from. When the Rittreck ended, Norita took over the machine tools, the assembly and some of the staff (Hagiya, via English Wikipedia) and, by Japanese Wikipedia’s account, bought the design; it left out the mirror lock-up, and sold the result from 1971 as the Norita 66 and the Graflex Norita. The breech-lock mount went across unchanged: Topcon Club, with both cameras in hand, finds no functional difference between them, mount included, and Kamerastore lists the Noritar lenses as fitting the Rittreck and the Warner. Kilfitt’s camera mount for the line was coded WERI, which Patrice-Hervé Pont’s book gives for “Norita/Rittreck” (cited by pentaconsix).

How the Rittreck ended is told three ways. Hagiya, as camera-wiki cites him, has Musashino going bankrupt in 1969, and Japanese Wikipedia’s Norita article, lensretro and Mike Eckman also speak of bankruptcy; English Wikipedia, working from the same Hagiya chapter, says only that Musashino decided to end production. Wista, the company Musashino became, says in its own history that trouble with the lens maker over making and selling the Rittreck 6 ended in a dissolution, without saying what was dissolved, and that the sales company Rittreck Shōji went on to make and sell everything except the Rittreck 6 before the firm took the Wista name in 1972. Hayata Camera also blames trouble with the lens maker, and says the camera passed to Norita, the lens supplier. Japanese Wikipedia’s Wista article puts it down to difficulty raising development funds. Wista does not name the lens maker, though Norita is the only optical supplier any source mentions. Topcon Club adds that only a small number were made before Norita took the camera on.

There are three badges, and no source reports a mechanical difference between them. The Japanese camera carries “Rittreck 6×6” in script on a framed plate on the prism. The Warner carries “warner” in lower case with a small emblem. Modern Photography’s December 1969 guide to top cameras gives it a page as the Warner 6×6, “known as the Rittreck in Japan”, made by Musashino Kōki and imported by Warner Products, Inc. of Beverly Hills, California, at $495; camera-wiki calls it the Warner 66 and pentaconsix the Warner Rittreck. Both photographs of it show a Rittron lens and the chrome body, and a 1972 Photo Argus advertorial for Norita describes the Norita 66 as derived from “the Rittreck and the Warner”, so it belongs to the Rittreck years; lensretro and the opening of Mike Eckman’s Norita article call the Warner 66 an export name of the Norita instead. The Revue Rittreck Six was sold by Foto-Quelle under its Revue house brand, with “Revue” in script on the prism above the usual Rittreck 6×6 plate, and its German manual, under an English cover, is the most detailed account of the camera found. Hayata Camera also names a “Graphic 6×6” for the American market, which no other source mentions.

Telling a Rittreck from a Norita starts with the finish: the Rittreck, Warner and Revue have a chrome top plate and a chrome front around the mount over black leatherette, where the Norita is black all over. Then look for the round knurled dial with a red index line on the front plate beside the lens, on the shutter-release side; that is the mirror lock-up, and no Norita has one. The original lens reads RITTRON, and on the 80mm the barrel is chrome and the stop-down ring sits behind the aperture ring, which the Noritar moved nearer the mount (Topcon Club); but the lenses interchange, and Modern Photography already listed the standard lens as “Noritar or Rittron” in 1969, so the lens proves little about the body. Inside, Topcon Club finds thin curved film springs set low on the take-up side and high on the supply side, where the Norita’s sit at mid-height, the take-up one tipped with a small roller, and a screen with a plain central microprism and no framing lines, where the Norita has a split microprism and lines (Japanese Wikipedia agrees on the split microprism but has Norita removing a frame, not adding one). The strap lugs sit at the front corners of both shoulders. Two features that look like Rittreck markers are not: the film-type ring with separate black-and-white and colour settings for 120 and 220, and the N-D lever and pull-out ring for double exposures, are both in the early Norita 66 manual too.

Buying one means testing what Norita changed. Topcon Club found the Rittreck’s shutter louder and its mirror shock greater than the Norita’s and warns about slow speeds. It reports that magazine articles of the time named the mirror lock-up as the Rittreck’s weak point and said Norita dropped it to remove a cause of breakdowns; the writer’s own view is that the quick-return mechanism was the camera’s weak spot. The Revue manual’s cautions are practical: two full strokes, or several short ones, until the counter engages, and never force the lever once it resists; the counter works only with film loaded and returns to S when the back is opened; a lens goes on with its retaining ring turned fully anticlockwise, so that the red dot sits in the middle of the depth-of-field scale, and the ring is then turned clockwise to the stop. The manual describes no self-timer, and Modern Photography confirms there is none. Hayata Camera will strip and service the body, at a price it calls comparatively high. No production figure and no serial table has been published; the only body numbers in the sources are 670049, in the Revue manual’s photograph, and 681772 on the Warner in Modern Photography’s.

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This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Rittreck 6×6 / Warner 66
Diagram of the Rittreck 6×6's mirror-raising mechanism, in which the mirror moves back as it rises — Jean-Jacques Milan, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

More sample photos elsewhere

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Live listings

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Related: Norita 66 / Graflex Norita

Lenses for this body: Noritar 40mm f/4 · Rittron / Noritar 55mm f/4 · Noritar 70mm f/3.5 (leaf shutter) · Rittron / Noritar 80mm f/2 · Rittron / Noritar 160mm f/4 · Noritar 240mm f/4 · Noritar 400mm f/4.5

Sources (26)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.