The real toycamera is a Canomatic.

No, this is not about the real Canomatic by Canon, but about the Canomatics produced by the chinese factory Ouyama. A very good collection of these cameras has the Kamera-Museum Kurt Tauber!

They are fake-trash-copy-toy-cameras of the worst kind. But they work. The typical lens of the Canomatics isn't very sharp, rather like a Lensbaby, but the effect is a little bit different. Anyway, it's a kind of a soft focus lens.

I bought my Canomatic Meikai AR-4367, which seems like a very bad copy of a Minolta 5000 AF, on a flea market in Germany for 5 Euro.






The name Meikai was first used by the japanese camera manufacturer Tougodo, for example the Meikai ELX.
Now a picture with the fake Meikai AR-4367 MADE IN CHINA with an original Meikai MT-118 flash MADE IN JAPAN:
I use the camera for landscape impressions. It's not fine-art, but it makes unforgettable impressions:
"morgue 1", germany, 2006

"morgue 2", germany, 2006

"the obscured landscape", brasil, 2007

"the unpleasant landscape 1", brasil, 2007

"the unpleasant landscape 2", brasil, 2007

At Flickr is a group named you can't - canomatic. TAKE A LOOK, IT'S WORTH IT!

Here the "how to crash a meikai/canomatic camera!"- video ;))