Love the square format on 135 film, are there any other cameras that offer that?
It's tiny, but kind of tall because of the wind knob. Also quite heavy for it's size.
The Star 50 will shoot a whole roll without having to re-wind the spring, albeit with slower film advance towards the end. I wind the spring periodically to keep it advancing fast. Spring is surprisingly hard to wind when it's almost fully wound.
Requires a special take-up cartridge or spool (there are a few variants of these). Robots before the Star model (much earlier version than the Star 50) also require a special supply cartridge.
Viewfinder has frame lines for 40mm and 75mm, not parallax corrected. Eye relief is poor.
Winder is not quiet (there are special 'silenced' versions available). However, it doesn't wind until you release the shutter button, so it's possible to be discreet if you want since the shutter is not loud at all. It doesn't have true continuous shooting, only as fast as you can press the shutter.
Shutter speeds below 1/30 hang on mine, apparently a common issue with these cameras, B works fine though. Shutter dial is small and hard to turn, mine is particularly stiff at 1/125, not sure if this is normal.
The silver Schneider Xenar 38mm f/2.8 on mine is soft around the edges wide open, but fine stopped down to 5.6 or smaller. Build quality and haptics are excellent. There are hyperfocal scales for 3 different apertures, just line up the colored aperture and focus distance and the corresponding colored dots show total depth of field (which always goes to infinity). There are newer black versions of the lenses that are bigger, have fewer aperture blades, and have much easier to read markings.
Most of the lenses available are from Schneider, options range from 30mm to 150mm.
Since these were popular for espionage, there are accessories available like remote electromagnetic shutter release, tiny fixed focus lenses, etc.
There are number of variants of this and other Robot cameras; half frame, no viewfinder, silenced, smaller spring integrated into the body (e.g. Star 25), etc. There is also a later rangefinder model, the Royal, which uses a different lens mount, offers full frame variants and has true continuous shooting. The Royal variants are a lot more expensive.
I paid $388 for mine with the Xenar, total shipped from UK including tariff.
Sep 18, 2026 at 01:22 PM
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