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Old Cameras in Old Movies

AgX said:
Unidentified cine camera and spotmeter

"Co je Vám, doctore?" drama , CSSR , 1984

My first thought was that of a siviet Kiron, but so far I could not find tghis model at all...
Anyone to make me wiser?
View attachment 236671
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Looks like an Eclair ACL 16mm with an unusual paint job, but it could be a Soviet copy of some sort.

As to a spotmeter, I don't see one. I do see a silver carrying handle on top of the camera; if that is what you are speaking of...
 
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  • AgX
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Ihagee Exakta Varex IIb w. pentaprism (flash likely from Braun)

"Einer fehlt beim Kurkonzert" crime tv-movie West-Germany 1968
A local photographer at a remote village is ordered to do scene-of-crime photos by lack of police experts.

 
There is a Nikon F3 in Scorsese's "The Irishman" about 17 hours in, but I am not about to post a still of that film...
 
Leitz cameras

-) Panphot

-) M w. Visoflex and Bellows on Linhof tripod

The Panphot was even employed twice! At the lab of an art forger, and at the lab of an art consultant. The Leica only at the forger.
(The forger even got a second microscope-camera, but that model I already presented at another post...)





 
fantasy finder grid

"M - wie Mauser" episode of a political-crime series , East-Germany , 1969

setting: East-Berlin, 1952 , Stasi-officer uses an unidentified still-SLR

finder image: (the DRA is the archive logo)

 
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A Comedy called Fighting Trouble, Bowery Boys, one of the characters invents a Speed Graphic with a self focusing Radar lens. I saw on cable so I don't have a image to share.
 
FBI camera repair shop

"Walk East on Beacon" spy and propaganda movie , USA , 1952


"[The FBI's] strategy is based on the utmost technical use of the scientific techniques of crime detection."



Well, that bench work is not actually breathtaking. Though one may wonder what that car-spotlights are making there. The answer is given halfway the movie, they contain behind their reflectors:

Meopta Microma cameras


Moreover in that movie it turns out that a guy blackmailed to work for a soviet spy network in the past already had been blackmailed by them to optain the formula for a new colour film emulsion from a "film-outfit" in Rochester he was working for at that time... Otherwise they would tell the firm that he had a communist past as student. Later they blackmailed him again with his treason on the emulsion formula.
 
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Fingerprint camera


"Walk a Crooked Mile" spy/propaganda movie , USA , 1947



To photograph a veiled text within an oil-painting, that only by means of UV-exciting could be made visible, a FBI man uses an unidentified kind of Brownie camera with integrated flash and actually flashes the exposure... :


To create the respective UV-light he uses this device which I could not identifiy. It is of utmost modern design:


And of course in a good spy-movie a micro-camera must not not be lacking.... Here one of those japanese models in hand the of an "enemy of the USA" (communist):
 
Not movies, more like newsreel:
Last night, I caught parts of a TV program about the McCarthy era.
Several Speed Graphics in the hands of newsmen following events!
 
Polaroid Land 120 used with burka

"Modesty Blaise" secret agent parody , UK , 1966

 
Faked Echo 8

From the Echo 8 at least 3 variants exist:
w. rectangular lens opening a. frame-viewer in cap
w. round ring around around lens opening a. frame-viewer in cap
w. round ring around around lens opening without frame-viewer in cap

Here a fake of the latter, as the lens opening is too high, just under the hinge of the cap:

"Leer om Leer" crime tv-movie , Belgium , 80s



Into the scene with that photographing the stills are inserted as grainy, high-contrast photographs:



 
Contaflex I

"Die Stadt ist voller Geheimnisse" , West-Germany , 1955

A advertizing guy and amateur photographer tries talking the telephone girl of his firm to pose nude for an ad.
 
Linhof Super Technika 6x9 Press


"Hra bez pravidel" , crime movie , CSSR , 1967

press photographers at a crime court

also Flexaret, Praktica FX


By the way, a Foma neon advertizing showed up too
 
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FTP exposure meter

Can anyone shed some light on this meter ?


"Pět z milionu" , CSSR , 1959

used at a movie set




Unidentified folder camera
(neither Isolette nor Iskra)
used by press-photographer
 
AgX said:
Why 2 cameras??
Click to expand...

One looks like an 8x10, and the other, a 5x7. I talked to my wife's uncle about his grandfather who ran a studio in Japan. He told me that he always took more than one format on a shoot, including a C330 (which I got to use for a few years).
 
Thank you!
Did I ever mention there were too many camera models out there ?
 
So I was watching "The Manchurian Candidate" last night (the original, not the remake) and early on there was a scene at an airport with a bunch of 4x5 press cameras (I assume Speed Graphics, but I'm not all that familiar with them) and maybe a Rollei, all handled by reporters. But then the three primary characters in the scene (the son, Raymond Shaw, the mother, played by Angela Lansbury, and the "Johnny Iselin" a Joseph McCarthy like character) board another plane and Johnny has a camera around his neck that I can't identify, but it looks a bit like those Mamiya press cameras:



Or a bit more zoomed in:



Can anyone identify it?


EDIT: the scene with the 4x5 press cameras are hard to screenshot because its a busy scene with a lot of people walking in front of the camera, but here is a shot with most of one of the cameras visible:

 
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Speaking of press cameras, in the Aretha Franklin concert film "Amazing Grace," which was finally released last year, there is a still photographer using a Mamiya Super 23 camera. He is in the red suit in the screenshot below, which I got from the official trailer. You can't see much of his kit in that picture, but in the movie it's clear. I don't know his name, but if the photos were used for the album art, he's probably got a credit somewhere.

It's a great movie, I highly recommend it if you like music.
 
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