Yeah - imagine Vivitar without the high end lenses. Hanimex was
originally Australian based but sourced stuff wherever they could,
mostly from the eastern block and Hong Kong. It was always very basic
gear but their range was wide and the bits and piece were often
acceptable - things like darkroom trays and so on. Lots of cheap
plastic P&S cameras and the like. One of those post-War
entrepreneurial success stories.
Their top of the range stuff was the projection equipment which was
quite popular (cheap) and their SLR lenses which were useable but ho-
hum and still around in bucketloads, mostly busted. Usually black
with a green stripe (and we all know that a colour stripe improves
optical quality significantly, right?) If you were 18 years old and
bought a Practika as your first real camera, you prolly bought a
Hanimex telephoto as well as it was cheap and as good starter
although it was soft and not too robust. Sort of thing that a
storeperson would talk you into at point of sale if you couldn't
afford the OEM equivalent. I don't think they ever put their own name
on an SLR though but I could be wrong. If they did, it would have
been East German.
They had good market penetration in the UK and their stuff was
everywhere when I was a teenager. I suspect that they didn't really
get into the US though although some odd higher end products like a
yellow underwater camera did seem to make it over there in some
quantities.
No idea what happened to them - probably bought up by an asset
stripper and dismantled.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 29/07/2007, at 4:04 PM, khen lim wrote:
> Hanimex is just a trading company. They were once fairly big in
> Australia;
> offering lenses to those on a strict (read LOW) budget. Lenses were
> made by
> someone else. Hanimex was also into slide viewers, negative sleeves,
> developer tongs, yada yada yada. If you value optical quality, look
> elsewhere.
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