Miranda.

Personal Miranda MS-1 Super Camera Review.

This was my first SLR camera that I bought second hand from a friend in 1982 for £70, originally an "exclusive to Dixons" camera priced at around £110.
Although it is not a digital SLR camera I thought it worth a mention as it is the camera that I planned to replace with the Olympus E-500 DSLR .

The Miranda MS-1 was a completely manual camera where by you had to set everything manually to take a picture, (shutter speed, aperture " f " number, film ISO number and of course focus). In fact the only electronic help you got was a built in light meter which gave a hint to over or under exposure.

Focusing was quite easy because what you saw through the viewer was what you got as you were literally looking through the lens, plus there was a focusing prism which aided in the focusing process. If you knew the distance from camera to subject you could simply use the distance scale on the lens barrel although this was not as accurate.

The camera used the old Pentax "K" mount to affix the lenses to the body, this was quite handy as at the time there was quite a variety of different lenses available to choose from even though the two extra lenses that I purchased were both manufactured by Miranda.

Changing the lenses over was easy, in fact the method is still adopted by most SLR cameras today. A release lever was pressed on the camera body and the lens twisted to remove it from a bayonet fitting.
Fitting the lens was the reverse procedure with two red dots to line up on lens and body before twisting to fit the lens.

Over a period of time I purchased quite a few odds and ends to go with this camera but the main big purchases were the lenses, the flashguns and the tripod.

The lenses were both made by Miranda, one was a 35mm to 135mm macro zoom lens that was ideal for close up and portrait pictures, the other was a 75mm to 300mm zoom lens that I intended to use for long distance photography although this proved to be not a very good lens for that job.

The flashguns were again made by Miranda, (thought I best keep to one manufacturer) I had two Miranda 500 CD Multi dedicated flashguns with angle bounce heads that would work on almost any make of camera at the time, they also had diffusers and colour filter mounts. I also had two Miranda CTB-24 Flashguns that were a bit more powerful than the 500 CD's, again they had angle bounce heads but no diffusers or filters.

The tripod was a standard three segment Velbon DH-30 with cam-lock legs and a rising centre column attached to a "pan and tilt" video head and had a fixed screw to attach the camera, (no quick release mechanism). I made a few bits to go with this tripod so I could use the centre column as an overhang boom to get the camera closer in to awkward areas, a good example of this was in the garden trying to photograph bees on plants!

What I Got For £70:

Bought As Extras:

User Manual