With the cooperation of Japanese camera manufacturers, the Japan Camera and optical instruments Inspection and testing Institute (JCII) was founded in 1954. It was formed to inspect all cameras exported from Japan in order to maintain quality standards. JCII in 1969 started to designate some cameras as “Historical Japanese Cameras” and began efforts to preserve these important items. Several thousand cameras are housed at the museum. The JCII Camera Museum was established to expose as many people as possible to cameras and the history of photography, and to educate people about the discipline. From February 7th 2006 to June 18th 2006, JCII Camera Museum has a special exhibition on the Pentax cameras, starting from “Asahi Flex”, the first 35mm SLR camera in Japan by Asahi Kogaku (Pentax). The exhibition address in Japan is JCII Ichiban-cho Bldg., 25, Ichiban-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-0082 Japan. The cameras in the above picture (from left to right) :

• Asahi Flex, the first 35mm SLR camera in Japan in 1952. It has a cloth curtain focal plain shutter and shutter speeds range from 1/20 to 1/500 sec.
• Pentax 645, the world’s first multi-mode medium format film camera in 1984
• Pentax Auto 110, the smallest interchangeable lens SLR with TTL metering ever made in 1979
• Pentax 6×7, first released in 1969, underwent some minor modifications while in production, namely the addition of a mirror-lock-up (MU), which is a useful addition for tripod photography that will improve image quality.
• Pentax *list D, at the time of the launch, is the world smallest digital SLR camera in 2003.

Website : Special Pentax Exhibition at JCII Camera Museum (in Japanese)