C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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The Alpa 10d (1969) is a 35mm single-lens reflex camera manufactured by Pignons S.A. of Ballaigues, Switzerland. It succeeds the Alpa 9d (which used an external selenium meter cell) by incorporating a TTL CdS metering system reading light through the taking lens — a significant step forward in metering accuracy, particularly with the Kern Switar and Macro-Switar macro lenses for which Alpa cameras were justly celebrated.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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Before you buy used
About this camera
The Alpa 10d advanced the Pignons SLR line with through-the-lens CdS metering — the first Alpa to bring TTL metering to the benchmark of Swiss-precision optics.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm |
| Mount | Alpa bayonet |
| Years | 1969–1974 |
| Metering | TTL stop-down CdS, centre-weighted |
| Battery | PX625 (or Wein cell equivalent) |
| Shutter | Focal-plane: 1s – 1/1000s + B |
| Flash sync | 1/25s |
| Viewfinder | Pentaprism, 97% coverage, 0.9× magnification |
| Focus aids | Microprism collar + ground glass |
| Mirror lockup | Yes |
| Weight | 730 g (body only) |
Pignons S.A. introduced the Alpa line in 1944 and refined it through a sequence of numbered models — 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 — over the following decades. The Alpa 9d (1965) was the first Alpa with a built-in selenium meter. The 10d (1969) replaced the selenium cell with TTL CdS, bringing the metering system inside the light path for accuracy that matched the high resolving power of Kern and Schneider optics.
The 10d was produced until approximately 1974, when it was succeeded by the Alpa 11e (electronic shutter) and 11ei (integrated electronic meter) — the final generation of Pignons Alpa cameras before the factory closed in 1990. Total Alpa camera production across all models is estimated at well under 100,000 units; individual model quantities were very small, and the 10d is accordingly scarce.
The Alpa 10d represents the mature realisation of the metered Pignons Alpa SLR. It pairs the finest Swiss and German optics of the period — Kern Switar, Macro-Switar, Schneider Componon-S in repurposed form, Schneider Curtagon wide angles — with metering that works accurately at the working aperture inside the lens. For macro and close-up photography, this remains a technically compelling combination.
Used examples are expensive relative to contemporaries like the Nikon F2 or Leica R4 but offer something those cameras cannot: the specific combination of Alpa optics, the Swiss-precision build, and the mirror-lockup mechanism designed for critical close-up work.
The Alpa bayonet mount accepts a range of premium optics:
BW
Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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Kodak Ektar 100 is a fine-grain C-41 color negative film with saturated color and high sharpness.
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