Technical details were kept as simple as possible. The body contained
the film spools and the image frame. Outer parts were the optical viewfinder, the film advance wheel, the opening shifter, the tripod thread, and one or two uncloseable red exposure counting windows.
All other functional parts were placed in the lens barrel's front
plate, except for the camera's most characteristic feature: the lens
barrel had to be turned 360 degrees (counter-clockwise) to be screwed
out of the camera body into working position, except in model I on which
a metal ring had to be turned to screw out the lens. The functional
elements in the lens tube's front plate were the meniscus lens, the two
round aperture masks, a shiftable nib to select one of the two
apertures, another shiftable nib to select the shutter speed, the
shutter and the tall shutter release button. The 5mm shifting travel of
the shutter release button was enough to cock the shutter before
exposure. Some of the postwar models had a flash cable connector in the
lens tube front plate. Model VI finally even got a flash shoe.
Type: viewfinder camera
Film: Type 620 film rolls (except Photax I: type 120)
Manufacturer: M.I.O.M.
Viewfinder: Galilei type optical finder (except model VI: frame finder)
Exposure format: 6×9, except model VI with format 6×6, and models I and V, both with both formats