Photography didn't have it easy at first. Before its invention, painting was the only way of capturing reality, and painters were naturally afraid of losing their privileged position and ending up painting living rooms. Everyone is a general after the battle, and we now know that's nonsense - but it's an interesting analogy to today's rise of...

M.P.P., or Micro Precision Products, was a British manufacturer of optical accessories that dabbled in several related industries.

Once upon a time, beyond nine mountains, nine rivers and one English Channel, there was once a Dallmeyer company - I recommend paying particular attention to the position of the letters in the name, it will come in handy in a few moments.

If you're sane, you'll naturally pack the most basic, lightest and most versatile gear available for a photo shoot.

You're a reporter in the US in the twentieth century and you're wondering what kind of camera you should get. Actually, you don't have to. Graflex. Done, solved.

USSR, the land of mud and wooden spoons, spent several decades churning out its one and only line of wooden cameras: the FKD (I could feel it in my bones that this acronym meant something, but I couldn't dig it up. "Fucking Klunky Device" maybe?).

Today we're going to talk about brass and aluminium. This lens is made of brass and aluminium. We've done our education on the materials side of things, and now we're going to please the linguists—it's a Hugo Meyer Atelier Schnellarbeiter 310mm f3, which the translator peculiarly translates as "fast worker."

There were loads of aerial photography lenses. Shitloads. Companies jumped into making them when the war machine needed 'em - even if they'd previously done something else like binoculars or other optical thingies (hello Aldis!). Or they pivoted from commercial optics, either partly or completely - cue Dallmeyer, Wray, Ross, TTH, Burke & James and...

Back then when people thought radiation was basically a vitamin, they crammed it into everything from face masks to toothpaste (Radium girls gives it a thumbs down), optics manufacturers weren't far behind (but hey, at least in their case it actually did something useful, Jiří Zouhar gives it a thumbs up).

What better way to start than with one of the most legendary lenses in history, first introduced all the way back in 1900? The name Heliar is such a prized family heirloom that it has survived to this day and is still in production - though now for digital cameras (I am crossing myself). However, it must be...