This was Ye Olde Photographer's very first new camera. He can't place the date exactly, but YOP received it as a gift sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. It's still functional, but 620 film is no longer available, except as respooled stuff that is pretty pricey.

It has a simple meniscus lens and one shutter speed. It does have a tab to allow "bulb" exposures and two apertures. YOP hasn't gotten around to measuring either, but he thinks the shutter is about 1/50 and the apertures probably about f11 and f22.

Anyway, as YOP was tinkering with these pages, he grabbed a roll of 120 Ilford Delta 100 and respooled it onto a 620 spool luckily found hiding in a corner of the darkroom. Here we see some results on a partly cloudy winter day. YOP vaguely recalls the old standby was Kodak Verichrome or Verichrome Pan, likewise no longer made. So it worked, though the Bronica needn't fear competition.

Oct. 2009: In response to a couple of questions in the comments, the camera opens by pulling outward on the winding knob to disengage it, then pulling the little chrome button at the top front end of the handle. Then you just slide the internal works forward. The metal front has all the "camera" attached, the box portion is just an empty shell. 120 roll film is the same film dimension and backing paper numbering as 620; the difference is in the spool diameter and key slot for the winder knob. In absolute darkness one can wind a roll of 120 onto another 120 spool to get to the far end, then spool the film back onto a 620 spool. There is occasionally some slight annoyance with the tape that attaches the film to the backing paper bunching up a bit. Only the #1 frame end is taped, the reason two step spooling is done; it avoids feed problems going through the camera.

A few large photo stores do offer 620 film. It is re-spooled 120 and sells at a substantial premium. Most of these old cameras used films around 32 to 64 in speed, so the use of films faster than ISO 100 is likely to result in serious over-exposure in bright daylight. If you have your 620 film commercially processed, you might want to request the empty spool be returned to you.