Interesting video on KGB spy camera

He also mentions the CIA Tropel T-100:





Now that's a real Olympus "Pen"!

Interesting research and video. Thanks. I too was fascinated by spies and always watched I Led Three Lives on TV in the 1950s about Communist spies in America. Coincidentally, my gastroenterologist has cameras like that.

If you get a chance try to get to the International Spy Museum in Washington. Lots of great photographic stuff there.

Also the book by William White "Subminiature Photography" ISBN # 0-240-51710-5. It's out of print but worth the hunt. Here is a pic. of an extremely small film cassette on page 244 of his book. It's less than 1/10th the size of a Minox cassette and loaded with ultra high resolution film that was 3mm wide and a base thickness of 1.5 mil. Incredibly hard to slit to that width and load into the cassettes. The hardback book has 262 pages.

Also the book again by William White "The Microdot - History and application" ISBN # 0-932572-20-0. Hardback with 156 pages. "It is the first authoritative review of the entire development of the technique of reducing text and images by photographic and electrographic techniques until they are invisible to the unaided eye"

Lots of good stuff at the Crypto Museum also - https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/camera/index.htm

Russian C-112 reproduction camera

Russian Rubin rollover camera

Russian KOPIR copy camera

East German GSK camera for shooting thru pinholes

Russian Zakhod surveillance camera

German Robot SC (surveillance camera) . Manufactured in Dusseldorf. Introduced in 1987. I purchased this at the factory for $ 3500 35 years ago. Never had a roll thru it. Totally silent. 35mm film loaded into their own proprietary cassette. Commissioned by the Israeli Mossad. Totally electronic, totally silent, and part of an extensive system which the factory could supply. Could be operated and hidden in a hand bag, brief case, calculator, radio

Those are all quite cool, thanks for sharing them.

spookyphoto said:

East German GSK camera for shooting thru pinholes

GSK

www.cryptomuseum.com

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Exactly Wasn't that why all spies were told to check for all possible pinholes in their rooms so that either they were found or it took so long for the spy to look that he was too tired for any of the shenanigans that the lady planted on him had planned for him and was therefore of no use to the opposition's secret service be that KGB or RAC ?

pentaxuser

Here is a picture of a Minox EC. We used to highly modify them by removing the waterhouse stop in front of the lens to convert it from an effective f 5.6 to the standard f 3.5. The lenses in the EC and the other models were the same. We also refocused the lens so that the camera could be used for better document copying of 8 X 11 documents. We did 6 of these for the F.B.I. 35 years ago. Very few were ever seen by the general public.

It was hard being a spy. Crazy to think what risks were taken. First thing on the KGB camera, the shutter sounded like my Fujica 690. That's nuts.

spookyphoto said:

We did 6 of these for the F.B.I. 35 years ago. Very few were ever seen by the general public.

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Can I ask who you worked for?

loccdor said:

Can I ask who you worked for?

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I've worked for a research exercise physiology company doing work for the govt., photo engineering company doing R&D for the govt., owned my own small photographic engineering business and worked in a large micrographics company in their R&D dept.