Collectible camera question of the week.

[celery]

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...+II&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=off&sa=G



Woah, that a big link, check it out though. But I still don't know any other cameras that had a swastika on them.

 

[Mitica100]

Thanks, beautiful camera! It has a 'custom designed' Swastika which was applied later. Neat though!

The camera I was asking about is a very small camera, not a 35mm format. There goes another hint...

 

[Mitica100]

Ok... I guess that's a tough one. It's the ever popular Minox camera. Conceived and built in Riga (Latvia) by Walter Zapp, the Minox was an instant hit in the subminiature field. Before WWII Stalin made a pact with Hitler so that he (Stalin) can go in Latvia and claim it as part of the USSR. Hence, several thousand Minox Riga were branded Made in USSR. Hitler later reneged on that pact and eventually invaded USSR and Latvia. They produced the Minox Riga with a swastika logo on. I don't recall how many of them were branded that way. After the end of the war, Walter Zapp moved to Germany and supervised the Minox manufactury.

The Minox Riga cameras that have the above markings are very rare and expensive.

 

[Mitica100]

Another tough one...

What camera and what film was used to take the world's first published picture of an atomic blast taken at the Bikini atol?

 

[Mitica100]

Answer: Perfex 22 and Kodachrome.

 

[darin3200]

Cool thread, I love the camera trivia

 

[Mitica100]

Cool thread, I love the camera trivia

Excellent! I didn't want to post more for now so it doesn't look like spam. :lmao:

But... I'll have more to come. Glad someone likes this thread.

 

[Mitica100]

The first born camera was filmless. It was called Camera Obscura (or Dark Room in Latin). Although there were accounts of its use around 10th century, there were some recorded uses for this invention.

Who was the first person to write about the uses of the Camera Obscura? And what was it used for?

 

[Kent Frost]

I know that Leonardo Da Vinci mentioned it in his works as being a tool to aid in tracing and painting images from real life. But I've also heard that it was a tool used to view solar eclipses.

 

[santino]

I saw stuff dealing with the camera obscura in Da Vinci's museum in Florence.

 

[Mitica100]

And we have two winners! Kent Frost and Santino answered correctly.

The Camera Obscura existed in principle from 300 BC (Aristotle), there were claims that Roger Bacon used one to observe eclipses around 1300 AD. But the one that documented the use of a Camera Obscura was Leonardo.

Congrats to both of you.

 

[Mitica100]

Since we're discussing 'firsts' here, the next question will be about a first as well:

When was the first negative-positive process invented, who patented it and what was it called?

As a follow up, another question:

Why was it invented?

 

[markc]

I don't know the first part, but I think the "why" was because the positive-positive process was a one-time deal. One shot = one print. Having a negative meant you could keep making a bunch of other negatives from that, resulting in multiple positives.

 

[darin3200]

I guess in 1886 by Fox Talbot, called something like the wet process with collidian plates and done for making multiple pictures

 

[Mitica100]

Well, that's really close.

William Henry Talbot invented the calotype process in 1841, the first negative to positive process allowing for multiple copies. The exposure times were enormous, in 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process which reduced the exposure times to two-three seconds.

As to why, Talbot wanted to have an aid in copying nature onto canvass (painting/drawing) and was really frustrated with the existing machines, so he developed this process after hearing of Daguerre's invention in 1839.