Alpa built its name on Swiss precision and extremely limited production runs. But by the mid '70s, that approach was proving unsustainable. So in 1976, at Photokina in Cologne, Alpa made a hard left by unveiling a camera made in Japan by Chinon for Alpa of Switzerland. The Alpa Si 2000 was essentially a rebadged Chinon CE II Memotron and purists were aghast. Gone was the handmade Swiss craftsmanship; in its place, mass production. Still, Chinon wasn’t some random subcontractor. They were experts at building reliable “white label” cameras for other brands. Alpa, struggling to stay afloat, was simply trying to adapt.