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Old Cameras in Old Movies

Linhof Super Technika 9x12 w. Universal-Finder w. Polaroid back

(in same scene also a Linhof Super Technika 6x9 Press, Pentacon Fs, Land camera etc.)

"Dáma na kolejích" gender-comedy , CSSR , 1966




One guy uses a Hasselblad/Kiev88 with left handgrip. Cocks it by holding the winder knob static and twisting the camera. Does it super fast !! Never seen such before.
 
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Pentacon F
with: Sonnar, motor drive, magnetic release, radio remote control, 2 flashes

For bird-photography by east-german electronics scientist and amateur photographer.


"Angebot aus Schenectady" spy tv-movie , East-Germany , 1971








 
Canon Scoopix 16M

used by amateur or scientist

"The Judge" , drama , Bulgaria , 1986

 
Unfortunate timing but...
Here's an Hasselblad 501CM in Virus (1999)
 
Kodak Ektra 12

"Brussels by Night" drama , Belgium , 1983

Even the price of the camera was mentioned (as expensive) twice: 499 bel. francs
The camera was smashed by another taker just a moment later.

Even "Kodak" is mentioned. (Though that was also a generic term in Flemish for a snap camera.)




Viewfinder view:






 
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Unidentified camera and rangefinder

"De Vijanden" (The Enemies) , war-drama , Belgium/Netherlands ,1968

setting: Belgium 1944 , Battle of the Bulge; a US-senator sporting and using this camera when visiting the front-line

 
GOMZ Sputnik 1

sported by an background actor
Soviet TV music show consisting out of scenes filmed in open air , 1969

 
AgX said:
Unidentified camera and rangefinder

"De Vijanden" (The Enemies) , war-drama , Belgium/Netherlands ,1968

setting: Belgium 1944 , Battle of the Bulge; a US-senator sporting and using this camera when visiting the front-line
Click to expand...

The camera is in a misfitting case, based on the visible front frame of the actual viewfinder, it's probably a half-frame, either 35mm half frame (that was the common format before the Leica I came out in 1930) or 127 half frame, but probably 35 mm based on the rewind knob; the rangefinder is uncoupled and appears to be a shoe-mount type (not part of the camera).

And I found it (after looking through hundreds of images on Pinterest): It's a Gallus Derlux, the half-frame version of the Gallus Derby (which was based on the Foth Derby). It's 127 half frame (16 on a roll, same size as an 828 frame, 28x40 mm), the mounted accessory RF is a Gallus unit as well. What looks like a rewind is the film advance (photographer's right to left); the knob next to the shoe with the RF mounted is the shutter speed control; this camera had a side-moving focal plane shutter.
 
Donald, you are great!
I merely heard of the manufacturer Foth, and for sure never of the manufacturer Gallus. But a french manufacturer is not that surprising in a belgian production. Whether that camera is apt for a US senator... and whether such ever visited that frontline... (script and directing by the most laureated dutch author)

I wonder what kind of tag is hanging from the front standard.
 
AgX said:
wonder what kind of tag is hanging from the front standard.
Click to expand...

It's a dog tag. Soldiers weren't the only ones to wear them. A dog tag on a camera meant the powers that be knew you had it and were authorized to use it; get caught taking pictures without one, and someone was likely to ask a bunch of hard questions, on the presumption that you might be a spy.
 
Yes, to me it looked like a "dog-tag" too, but it made no sense at all to me. Thank you for explaining.
Thus the props were good on this point...
 
Robot Royal III with solenoid remote release


"Brücke des Schicksals" (Bridge of Fate) , drama , West-Germany , 1960

A artsy and thus looser press photographer decides to play fate and by this becomes successful.
Thus some gear to be seen.

The remote set-up being used for his greatest "coup".

 
I quite enjoy Russian/Soviet war movies so was happy to find Iron Fury (2019, aka T34) on Sky Movies. Set during the Great Patriotic War (WW2 to us Westerners) it has a scene where German press photographers are taking shots of a captured T34. One was using a Kodak Medallist, right era, wrong country.
 
In the reenactments of documenting a crime scene in this episode of "Wicked Attraction", the police is using a junk camera, the infamous "Canomatic" "Big Royal View". 3:20 and forward:


The actor pretends to look through the SLR prism finder, but the camera doesn't have one. It's ironic that they use a camera that has been used in many scams and invovled in trademark crimes. "Canomatic" is the most common fake names (it's a Canon trademark), but some of these cameras are marked "Canon", "Sony", "Mitsibishi" or "Panasonic", and names that are variations of real camera brands, like "Olympia", "Olempia", "Nikai", "Nokina", and so on.
 
I think there is also a Nikkormat in FMJ. when rafterman is photgraphing Joker with the prostitute, and the camera gets stolen:

 
Helios 1984 said:
Unknown camera from The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
Click to expand...

Looks like the Wild West tintype version of an Afghan/Pakistani "box camera" -- sleeve in the back is to allow handling the plate in the dark, by feel. For this kind of camera in the days before dry plates (or even as late as the 1930s for traveling portraitists) the collodion would be poured and sensitized in a nearby portable darkroom (often built into a caravan wagon) and put into the camera in a light tight box, camera closed and plate loaded in place (after previously focusing and composing), exposed, then plate returned to the box to go back to the darkroom for development by candle-powered safelight (yes, open flames near the ether solvent and collodion, but there were surprisingly few fires). Tintypes could be produced in this way within about twenty minutes from posing the subject to (still wet, but mounted in display frame) tintype in customer's hands.
 
Okay, technically, not an old movie, but...

The freshly released trailer for the new Perry Mason series -- prequel to the novels that became the 1957 series with Raymond Burr -- has Perry using a small folding camera at 0:26. It's a Kodak-Nagel Vollenda No. 48, a 127 half-frame folder that was the direct ancestor of the Retina. The one in the scene, however, is an anachronism; it's got a rim-set shutter. He's also shooting hand held with a fairly fast shutter, with a lens no faster than f/2.8, at night, in a time when ASA 50 was fast film (that'd be about three stops underexposed under modern streetlights).

Hey, at least it isn't a 35mm SLR. The producers at least tried to get the camera period correct; they only missed by a year or so. And, in fairness, the Vollenda 48 was launched in 1929, and over its run was sold with Compur-Rapid shutters, f/2.9 Xenar and f/2.8 Tessar, and Leitz Elmar f/3.5 lenses -- but it would have had a dial-set shutter until at least 1932.
 
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