PEARL RIVER
How would you like to have a Nikon F camera with a Minolta/Rokkor lens mount? If you do, look no further than the Pearl River!
The Pearl River is a major river in China, both geographically, historically, and economically. It empties into the South China Sea between Hong Kong and Macau.
The Pearl River company is probably best known for it's inexpensive TLR cameras, which provided very good results with fine optics and large negatives:
This and other Pearl River cameras were produced by a defense industry factory located in southern China. That's not a big surprise in and of itself since most, if not all, Chinese cameras started in defense plants. Why defense? Well, they needed to make optics for various military uses, so at some point, they decided that they might as well make cameras -- and money!.
Pearl River also made a 35mm SLR camera -- built to resemble a Nikon
F in style and features.
Pearl River Prototype
It has a mechanical shutter speeds of 1 second to 1/1,000, plus B and a 1/60 flash synch. Its pentaprism finder is removable -- and looks like the Nikon F's finder -- and it even has a Nikon F-like, add-on, cold flash shoe that is attached over the rewind crank, just like the Nikon. It is normally seen with a 58mm f2.0 Pearl River lens -- designed to look like a Nikkor lens! The camera is not inscribed "Pearl River", but that is the English translation of the two Chinese symbols on the camera. Consequently, the same camera is often listed as the Zhujiang, which means "Pearl (Zhu) River (Jiang)".
There were two interchangeable heads made for the camera. The first is a standard pentaprism. The second is a pop-up waist-level finder with a built-in pop-up magnifier. The focusing screen is NOT interchangeable.
Although the lens mount on the Pearl River is a Minolta/Rokkor lens mount, it is a modified mount. The Minolta mount has a tab that fits and locks into a notch on the top of the lens mount. Instead, the Pearl River used a pin that fits and locks into a hole on the rear of the lens mount. So although Minolta lenses will fit on the Pearl River (and its successor cameras), the lens will not lock in place. Under most circumstances this is not a problem, but it's best to be careful. If you turn the f-stop ring or focusing ring to the left too quickly or too firmly, you are likely to unintentionally remove the lens!
Pearl River S-201
The actual production model appeared in 1973. The designation S-201 now appears on the camera and there might have been some other changes too, but probably not. The camera has nothing at all to do with the Minolta SRT 201, although they both appeared at the same time. The body is typically seen in black, but apparently a few were made with "gold"-plated top and bottom covers.
The serial numbers start with a letter, such as "Y" and "J". This probably indicates the factory in which it was made.
Minor changes appeared over time to the camera (for example, one model has a prism head with a cold flash shoe on top) and lenses (some resembled Pentax lenses).
Pearl River S-205
In 1985, they produced a new version of the S-201 -- the S-205. The main difference is the addition of a TTL meter -- much like the ETM models of the Seagfull DF-1 and DF-2. In addition, the mirror lock-up was dropped. Apparently not many were made, so this model is very difficult to find.
Pearl River also made an S-207, but while the body looked similar to the S-201 & S-205, it was only available in chrome, not black, and used a Pentax K mount.
Pearl River also made at least seven, coated, accessory lenses with
a modified Minolta lens mount, at the time of the Pearl River production:
They might have made additional lenses during the production of their later Mingca & Huaxi cameras -- which had the same lens mount.
At some point, they lost the ability to use the name "Pearl River" so they changed the name to Mingca and made some other changes to the camera as well.
| Shutter | Shutter speeds |
Flash synch speed |
TTL meter- ing? |
ISO settings |
Auto expo- sure? |
AE lock? |
View- finder info |
Flash shoe |
Sensa- switch? |
PC plug? |
Multi- expo- sure? |
Cable release plug? |
Stop down button? |
Self timer? |
Mirror lock-up? |
Motor drive option? |
Battery used for |
Film indicator |
|
| Pearl River S-201 | cloth, horizontal |
1-1,000 B |
1/60 | N | N/A | N/A | N/A | None | Cold | N/A | X & FP |
N | Y | N | Y | Y | N | N/A | In shutter speed dial |