Mamiya Tower 221959

History

By 1959 Mamiya was producing 35mm SLR bodies for both the domestic Japanese market and for export under OEM arrangements. The Tower 22 fits into a pattern of Mamiya's early M42-based SLR production, which preceded the Mamiya Prismat and the later Sekor-branded bodies of the early 1960s.

The Sears Tower camera program spanned the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. Sears contracted with multiple Japanese manufacturers, and the Tower brand encompassed rangefinders, TLRs, and SLRs at various price points. The Tower 22 likely occupied a mid-tier position in the Sears SLR offering of its year - functional enough for a serious amateur but priced below the imported German competition.

M42 was the dominant SLR lens mount of the late 1950s, standardized in part through Pentax's adoption and used by Praktica, Zeiss Jena, and many Japanese manufacturers. Any Tower 22 body can accept the enormous M42 lens ecosystem - a significant advantage for modern shooters.

Mamiya would go on to produce several other Sears Tower-branded cameras in the early 1960s before the company moved to its own Sekor branding for export.

Why It Matters

The Tower 22 represents an important segment of photographic history: the flood of competent, affordable Japanese SLRs into the US market via department-store distribution that democratized SLR photography for American consumers in the late 1950s. Before Sears and similar retailers offered these cameras, a US amateur seeking an SLR faced either expensive German glass or waiting for domestic manufacturers.

For collectors, Tower-branded cameras occupy an interesting middle ground - genuinely rare because few were preserved (Sears cameras were often used hard and discarded), but inexpensive because "Tower" carries no prestige cachet. For shooters, any functioning Tower 22 offers full access to M42 lenses including Takumar, Helios, Meyer Optik, and Carl Zeiss Jena glass.

Lenses & Accessories

The Tower 22 accepts any M42-threaded lens. For period-correct use, Mamiya-Sekor M42 lenses of the late 1950s and early 1960s would have been the natural companion. For modern use:

• Asahi Super-Takumar lenses (55mm f/1.8, 35mm f/3.5) - abundant and optically excellent
• Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 35mm f/2.8 - wide-angle classic
• Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 - Soviet bokeh favorite
• Meyer-Optik Trioplan 100mm f/2.8 - bubble bokeh specialty lens

Standard M42 accessories (extension tubes, bellows) are widely available. No proprietary accessories are known.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• The Tower 22 was a consumer camera sold through department stores; it is not associated with named photographers or notable projects.
• Sears Tower cameras as a category were used primarily by US middle-class amateurs in the late 1950s and early 1960s - the same demographic that drove Kodak's Brownie sales in an earlier generation.

References

• No verified primary sources located.