Thursday, August 6, 2009

Minox "THE SPY CAMERA" Extraordinaire!



Of the many cameras I have owned over the years of my life, the Minox has been one of my favorites. These cameras carry the distinct label of "Spy Camera". Minox cameras were never designed as such and except for one or two rare occasions never used by any Secret Agency.
The term "Spy Camera" is due in most parts to Hollywood movies, It has been used in several movies most recently in the Movie "Shinning Through" with Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith. Other such movies like James Bond and a few World War 2 era films are mostly responsible for attaching the term "Spy Camera" to the Minox.

Without going into a great amount of detail about how the Minox works and all the technical details, let me say it is suffice to say the Minox uses a strip of photographic film inside a cartridge and yields several negative images measuring 8 mm x 11 mm per image. Today one can still purchase several different models of these cameras on Ebay although finding film and processing is getting harder to obtain. I always carry my Minox with me daily even yet today.

While thinning out a vast amount of photo CD's in my collection, I came across some Minox pictures that were transfered to CD by the processing lab a few years back. I came across three pictures that I thought I would share with you. The tractor, I understand dates back to the 1920's and the photos were taken in the late afternoon with my Minox model ECX. When one considers the size of the original negative 8 mm x 11 mm, the pictures are pretty good.

1 comment:

Alan said...

Cool!

I used to have either a Minox or the Minolta counterpart and may still have it somewhere - I don't think I ever finished the first roll of film, and I know it never got developed.

Always nice to see a Farmall & always nice to see a 'spy camera' image. :)

[I think James Bond's "spy camera" was a Minolta]

 
Google