was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese brand of professional medium format roll-film camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

s, including rangefinder

Rangefinder camera

A rangefinder camera is a camera fitted with a rangefinder: a range-finding focusing mechanism allowing the photographer to measure the subject distance and take photographs that are in sharp focus...

 and single-lens reflex models.

Bronica cameras first appeared in 1958, when the company's founder, Zenzaburo Yoshino, introduced a camera of his own design, the Bronica Z rollfilm camera, at the Philadelphia Camera Show. The name "Zenza Bronica" is reputedly derived from Zenzaburo Brownie

Brownie (camera)

Brownie is the name of a long-running and extremely popular series of simple and inexpensive cameras made by Eastman Kodak. The Brownie popularized low-cost photography and introduced the concept of the snapshot. The first Brownie, introduced in February, 1900, was a very basic cardboard box camera...

 Camera. The Bronica Z and successor Bronicas, using large-coverage, high-quality Nikkor

Nikkor

Nikkor is the brand of lenses produced by Nikon Corporation, including camera lenses for the Nikon F-mount.thumb|right|Nikko parent company brand, from which the Nikkor brand evolved....

 lenses, became instant successes.

Bronica later introduced lenses of its own manufacture with its later camera designs.