Bronica

Bronica was a Japanese brand of professional medium format roll-film cameras, including rangefinder and single-lens reflex models. Bronica cameras first appeared in 1958, when the company's founder, Zenzaburo Yoshino, introduced a camera of his own design, the Bronica Z rollfilm camera, at the Philadelphia Camera Show. The Bronica Z and successor Bronicas, utilizing large-coverage, high-quality Nikkor lenses, became an instant success.

Bronica later introduced lenses of its own manufacture with its later camera designs. Zenza Bronica Ltd. was eventually acquired by the lens manufacturer Tamron. Zenzaburo Yoshino died in 1988. Tamron discontinued the brand's single-lens reflex models (SQ, ETR and GS) in October 2004, and Bronica's last model, the RF645 rangefinder camera, was discontinued in October 2005.

Bronicas were workhorse cameras for wedding and portrait photographers for many years. Secondhand Bronica cameras are still widely used by professional and serious amateur photographers, in no small part due to superior image quality of 6x4.5, 6x6 and 6x7cm roll film over smaller film and digital sensor formats. Bronica SLR cameras employed a modular design: the major components of the camera—lens, body, film back and viewfinder—were separate and interchangeable.