Film Now THIS is a seriously compact, compact...

Lightmancer

Legend
Location
Sunny Frimley
Name
Bill Palmer
My latest purchase:

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Minox B par Lightmancer, on ipernity

This is a Minox B - I've had one before. It takes cassettes of 8x11mm film - hard, but not impossible to find or to get developed. It is the original "spy camera", as designed by Walter Zapp. This model has an inbuilt coupled meter, green and ND filters and is fully functional. The snake chain, you will notice, has beads at intervals - this provides the focal distance for document copying ;)

...I shall be picking up my decoder ring and buzz-saw watch from Q later this afternoon...
 
excellent.
I've had eBay temptations for one of these myself, but resisted, and as I just broke another 6x6 folder (my Isolette) have just shelled out for a Nettar to replace it.
So no spytoys for me :sad:
 
This was at a local camera fair. 60 quid was, I thought a fair price. It even came with the instruction booklet (essential if you have not used one before). Now to get some film... (y)
 
All these people who have "local camera fairs" get on my wick :mad:

(The nearest one for me would be Wolverhampton which is the best part of a 300-mile round trip.)

£60 sounds good to me for such a cutie. My "new" Nettar is £30 delivered. And I get 40x the negative area :)

Presumably as it's nominally 8mm film could you "roll your own" in used cassettes with cine stock ?
 
I used to shoot Agepe FF 'Dokument' film with the B, the C, and the III (I think, which had the flash connector), exposed 2-3 stops over and soft developed, and then using a diffusion enlarger could make 11x14 prints that looked sharp and apparently grain free. An extreme example to be sure, but good lessons in film processing.

I had a Minox in my jacket pocket in 1976 when rolling down the 77 in N.Ohio - spotted some limos and followed them into the Akron-Canton airport. Turned out to be a Reagan rally. Security pulled a can of S&W mace out of my pocket and asked me to take it back to the car, and I insisted they keep it so I wouldn't miss the speech (long lines at the cage where everyone had to get inside). After some minor argument, they kept the mace and let me in. But when I pulled out the Minox as Reagan was speaking from 15 feet away, things got interesting. They didn't take the camera, but they acted pretty nervous.

EDIT: Consumer Reports reported on the Minox in the 1970's, saying the photos were not good quality, but that the camera quality was extremely good. I've heard that the lens was really exceptional. As of the mid-late 1980's the modern version of the 8x11 film Minox was selling for about $2400, making this a bargain.
 
So... I have just bought a cassette of ISO400 TMAX for a tenner including P&P. Dev and scan is another tenner, so that's 20 squids for 40 frames - fifty pee a pop - I can live with that to give it a new lease of life :cool:

Edit: As long as I remember that on the B every time you open and close the camera - snik-snik - it is so addictive - you advance the film one frame regardless of whether you have exposed it or not. I learned this lesson in the past - everyone always wants to try it when they see it and it will cost me a fortune if I let them fiddle... :eek:
 
In the 80's I knew someone who had one of those. I wish I could remember its story - I think she got it from her father who had used it in Germany (on the US side!) during WWII, but I could be making that up. Nice to see they are still around and appreciated!
 
In the 80's I knew someone who had one of those. I wish I could remember its story - I think she got it from her father who had used it in Germany (on the US side!) during WWII, but I could be making that up. Nice to see they are still around and appreciated!

This might have gotten lost, but the 8x11 film Minoxes were selling for about $2400 new in the late 1980's, so the under-$100 price for this one is an aberration. The 8x11 film Minox was very unusual in the quality of its construction and lens, hence the high price. Why the old Minoxes are available so cheap I don't understand. Minox has made some cheap cameras - possibly even these little film cameras, but if you were to price a new Minox equal in quality to the 1950's thru 1970's versions (and if they were available), I think the price would still be in the thousands.
 
Now someone should make a digital version with an EVF but no screen and wifi so you could use your cell phone to view the pictures. It'd be a lot more sexy than those Sony cylinders.
If such a sexy camera was introduced, I would buy one immediately and become a professional spy! (y)
 
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