Share article:
Share article:

Some readers may be old enough to remember the venerable Swiss brand Alpa.  Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Alpa used to manufacture truly gorgeous 35 mm SLR’s.  The unusual colors, curved contours, amazing Swiss precision, flawless finish and unique ergonomic ideas (such as a film transport lever that worked using the index finger instead of the thumb, and moved in the opposite direction of traditional film advance levers), set Alpa apart from other camera manufacturers. Alpa also had a superb line of lenses, including several very unusual designs. Fast forward roughly 4 decades, and after major changes in ownership and strategy, the venerable brand is alive and w...

Read this story and all the best stories on The Luminous Landscape

The author has made this story available to Luminous Landscape members only. Upgrade to get instant access to this story and other benefits available only to members.

Why choose us?

Luminous-Landscape is a membership site. Our website contains over 5300 articles on almost every topic, camera, lens and printer you can imagine. Our membership model is simple, just $2 a month ($24.00 USD a year). This $24 gains you access to a wealth of information including all our past and future video tutorials on such topics as Lightroom, Capture One, Printing, file management and dozens of interviews and travel videos.

  • New Articles every few days
  • All original content found nowhere else on the web
  • No Pop Up Google Sense ads – Our advertisers are photo related
  • Download/stream video to any device
  • NEW videos monthly
  • Top well-known photographer contributors
  • Posts from industry leaders
  • Speciality Photography Workshops
  • Mobile device scalable
  • Exclusive video interviews
  • Special vendor offers for members
  • Hands On Product reviews
  • FREE – User Forum. One of the most read user forums on the internet
  • Access to our community Buy and Sell pages; for members only.
Share article:
Michael Reichmann is the founder of the Luminous Landscape. Michael passed away in May 2016. Since its inception in 1999 LuLa has become the world's largest site devoted to the art, craft, and technology of photography. Each month more than one million people from every country on the globe visit LuLa.
See all articles by this author

You may also like

Jean Curran Vertigo Project portrait in vivid red and green tones
Photographer Profiles

From the Farm to the Darkroom: Jean Curran and the Glorious Art of Dye Transfer

There's a moment in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - a flash of color so saturated, so electrically alive, that it doesn't look like film. Jean Curran wondered about it and asked…
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

August 17, 2026

·

13 minutes read


mark hakstege composition
Community

LuLa Show & Tell - July: Composition (Part 2 of 2)

Different scenes, different approaches, one shared focus: the art of composition.
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

August 16, 2026

·

17 minutes read