In 1971 I acquired my first SLR camera, a Miranda "G" shown on the right in the image above. It came with a Soligor 50 mm f 1.9 lens (middle of image.) I later added an even cheaper Miranda S body, and a couple of additional lenses, the Soligor 28 mm (my first ever wide angle!) and a Vivtar 135 mm f3.5 (my first telephoto.)

I was very proud of this outfit, and I made a foam insert to fit a beat up old case I found somewhere. I got several years of use out of this outfit, and learned a lot from it.

The 28 mm and 135 mm lenses were both "preset" type lenses, where it was necessary to stop down manually to the working aperture, after focussing wide open. I recall the 135 mm Vivitar being a particularly nice lens optically, despite the cumbersome diaphragm mechanism.

Miranda was a brand that seemed to have much to recommend it. The Miranda lens mount was particularly versatile, so there were adaptors available to permit almost any other SLR lens brand to be used with a full range of focus. It also had interchangeable prisms/finders, in the manner of the Nikon F series. Unfortunately the quality of workmanship was rather poor, and the cameras were not all that reliable.

At the time, black cameras were super cool, so I painted the G and used black tape on the S. I also replaced the leatherette on one of them with suede (I believe the original leatherette got ruined during the course of a repair.)