Chinon Industries

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Chinon Industries Inc. (チノン株式会社, Chinon Kabushiki-gaisha^?)

was a Japanese camera manufacturer. It developed and continues to develop many digital camera models for Kodak, who took a majority stake in the company in 1997, and made it a fully-owned subsidiary of Kodak Japan, Kodak Digital Product Center, Japan Ltd. (株式会社コダックデジタルプロダクトセンター, Kabushiki-gaisha Kodakku Dejitaru Prodakuto Sentã^?), in 2004 .^[1]

They manufactured many cameras, such as the CG-5 which was one of the first cameras ever to use an Auto Focus lens, which had to be bought separately. The lenses are now rare and difficult to come by. They were cumbersome and had two infra-red "eyes" on the top. They would connect by a bayonet fitting similar to the Pentax K fitting except they also had electrical contacts which would power the motor at the press of the shutter release button. Most of Chinon's cameras used the Pentax K mount, which was promoted by Pentax as a universal mount, and therefore allowed, and enouraged other manufacturers to utilize their mount.

Chinon also was a manufacturer of CD-ROM drives, scanners and floppy disk drives.