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Old Cameras in Old Movies

St Ives - UK

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Across the Liffey

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Across the Liffey

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I haven't read all of the posts so this may have been mentioned, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the mighty Argus C3. A silly movie, but still fun to watch.
 
I recently realized that in old movies where there's a newspaper photographer with a Speed Graphic, they almost never have film in it. They change lightbulbs, but you never see one operate a dark slide or a Grafmatic.
 
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They also tend to have the bellows racked way out for visual effect.
 
Canon EX Auto

Porst Reflex CT-L Super

Leicaflex SL

Minolta SRT 101 w. Agfatronic 320 CA


"30 Liter Super" , episode from TV crime-series "Tatort" , West-Germany , 1979


All used at a press conference

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Omega Chromega B

"Zweierlei Knoten" , episode from TV crime-series "Tatort" , 1979

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Upgraded Box Camera , w. (AE) flash and tape measure

"Goodnight Mr Bean" , episode from TV comedy series "Mr. Bean" , UK , 1995


used as if there was a finder at the rear

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Forgive me for not reading all 37 pages but I am certain the good and upstanding people here might not have admitted to seeing The Head That Wouldn’t Die ... maybe 2/3 through the movie a wonderful scene with a lovely woman modeling in a leopard-print bikini in a make shift apartment studio filled with lecherous camera-fiends with their 35mm slrs, tlrs and press cameras. It was a fantastic film, but that scene really made me cringe ( and I don't cringe easy ).
 
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Also haven't reviewed all 37 pages but somewhat related... HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on a Nikon 8mm/8 Fisheye...

Screen-Shot-2019-09-23-at-18.09.59.png


And in the same movie during the "council meeting" scene a photographer moves around the meeting taking photographs with what looks like a Spotmeter of some sort... (futuristic, you know)... sorry no good images found...


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Minox A with open flash from flashpowder in a little tin box, ignited by a match

"Verrat an Deutschland" , spy movie , West Germany , 1955



used by Richard Sorge...
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I think it's an M2 in Parker a 2013 film with Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, and Nick Nolte.
 
Also haven't reviewed all 37 pages but somewhat related... HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on a Nikon 8mm/8 Fisheye...

View attachment 291250

And in the same movie during the "council meeting" scene a photographer moves around the meeting taking photographs with what looks like a Spotmeter of some sort... (futuristic, you know)... sorry no good images found...


View attachment 291252
Not surprising. Kubrick was a photography nut. I attended the traveling exhibit of his work and life a couple of years ago, where his photo interest was a big part of it.
He collected all kinds of lenses, especially kind of good to downright crappy ones for their character.
He is one of a few directors to go elbow deep into the cinematography of his movies. Nothing was left up to the DP, if you could even use that term.
 
... not sure if anybody named those but anyway, here my 5 cents:

Imitation of life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)

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Yiyi (Edward Yang, 2000)

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The wind will carry us (Kiarostami, 1999)

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p.d.

More older than this? impossible !

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  • drkhalsa
  • drkhalsa
  • Deleted
  • Reason: need to add quote
Fake Exakta

I think I already hinted at this camera in the past.
However in this still Jan explicitely asks Tini to shade his lens by means of her headscarf . Likely a unique scene in a movie.


"Jan und Tini auf Reisen" , episode "Container" , TV movie w. animation within real acting , GDR 1981

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From the 2015 episode titled "Old Wounds" in the excellent UK series "Vera", an Olympus OM-10.
It is a bit hard to see in the various snippets of the show where it is visible, but together those snippets make the camera model reasonably certain.
And as those snippets are mostly flashback scenes looking back to 1984, and as the camera is in the hands of a photography student in northern England, that makes sense.
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Watching "Space Cowboys" the other night with Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones on and I noticed the reporter was using a Minolta Dynax 9 ( AKA Maxxum 9 ) with a vertical grip and a Minolta 300mm f/4 HS APO G .


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