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Old Cameras in Old Movies

Martha Raye with what appears to be a Leica in "Hellzapopin" (1941). I shot this off the screen of a 35mm Steenbeck with an IPhone, so sorry for the low quality...

 
I guess that's where your ID KINO comes from?
That Steenbeck is quite an impressive piece of equipment.
 
Contemporary cameras appearing in movies made at a certain time are one thing...has anyone spotted a movie in which the time setting of the move is in the past (compared to when the movie was released originally) and a camera appropriate to that past is seen?
Hypothetical example: movie D-Day released in 2013 and depicting 1941 planning and invasion of Normandy and showing a photographer using a Cunningham Combat Camera​
 

How about the click-whirr when the camera is a manual film advance camera, not one with motorized film winder?!
 
choiliefan said:
I guess that's where your ID KINO comes from?
That Steenbeck is quite an impressive piece of equipment.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I've watched millions of feet of film on this beastie and it just keeps going. Of course, it helps that Dwight Cody of The Boston Connection has our service contract and keeps the machine in tip-top shape. I ditch it all at the end of the year; retirement. Sad, but ready to go...
 
Just viewed Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano. Story takes place when Rolleiflex was king. Rolleiflexes galor!
 
An episode of Gunsmoke from the late 1950's featured this:


Here is a view of the magnesium? wool in the flash pan:

and the rain of sparks as Miss Kitty has her portrait done:
 
choiliefan said:
An episode of Gunsmoke from the late 1950's featured this:
View attachment 352296

Here is a view of the magnesium? wool in the flash pan:
View attachment 352298
and the rain of sparks as Miss Kitty has her portrait done:
Click to expand...

Looks like a Kodak or Korona View camera.

The flash tray is for magnesium powder, but it often came in the form of a "ribbon" that could be ignited whole for a timed burn or ground-up for a instantaneous flash.

The film holder on the photographer's shoulder in the last picture appears to be a metal Graphic type holder from the next century...
 
The creature from the black lagoon has a speed or crown graphic in a diving housing...
 
Not a movie, but a tv show. Law and Order Toronto Criminal Intent, the second episode. It's pretty hilarious.





I especially like the obviously-not-taken-with-a-Leica photos dangling from the wire.
 
A very brief appearance of a Mamiya Six in Kinuyo Tanaka’s 1955 film The Moon Has Risen.
 
This is from "The Devil's arithmetic" and is supposed to take place in 1941.

 
Not anything you'd call an "old movie" but the third episode of the new Fallout series on Amazon Video has a photo shoot ("The Beginning" is the scene header -- internally set in 2076, which in the Fallout timeline has technology roughly like early 1950s to early 1970s) where the photographer is using an RB67 -- with a backdrop, full multi-light remote setup, and on a tripod. Waist level viewfinder, though (I'd have expected a prism, even on a tripod, to get the camera up to eye level).

At first (with about 2 seconds of screen time) I thought it was a Hasselblad, but when they came back I could see the cocking motion with the lever, and when they zoomed in I could read the Mamiya nameplate above the lens.

Too bad the actor wasn't instructed about the need to advance film on the back separately from cocking the body with the lever on the right side...
 
An episode of Leave it to Beaver with Richard Deacon and his Kodak:
 
choiliefan said:
An episode of Leave it to Beaver with Richard Deacon and his Kodak:
Click to expand...
The coveted Retina IIIC... I hope it got some real use and not only used as a prop.

The Swedish short tv series "I dag röd" (Today red) from 1987, and taking place in 1945. The photographer "Harry Friberg" has a much later Rolleiflex 3,5F.



In the tv series (they are based on books by Stieg Trenter), "Träff i helfigur", also from 1987, takes place in 1948. This Rolleiflex 3,5 MX (or 3,5A) from the first half of the 1950s is another anachronism.

 
Three Body, the Tencent version of the drama
 

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Just saw in the Netflix series Bodkin, episode 2, a Minolta SR-1. Not sure what the lens is, but I think might be a third party zoom from Sigma or something, so maybe from the 80s. Since the show plays in the present, sure, why not and possible, but somehow still an odd model choice. I guess the SR line is cheap...
 
ant! said:
Since the show plays in the present, sure, why not and possible, but somehow still an odd model choice
Click to expand...

Might be characterization. I haven't seen Bodkin but if the character has a dislike of digital, or is old enough to have had such a camera from new and the fact they still use it says something about their personality, it might well have been an intentional choice.
 

The character says she doesn't like digital, something like this, and takes photos of village events. She's maybe 50, so likely hasn't bought the SR-1 new, but of course of an age where she started and stayed with film.
 
The 1958 Japanese film "Giants and Toys" is about publicity, so a key character (played by Yûnosuke Itô), a celebrity himself, photographs using Rolleiflex & Leica, while others photograph HIM with press cameras. It's on Mubi, YouTube, etc. GREAT film btw, despite the curious use of a wide-angle finder.

 
RIP Terence Stamp (1938-2025).

With Hasselblad in The Collector (1965)

 
How about old cameras in new movies?
A Mamiya C220 plays a prominent part in the movie 'Camera' (2024).
 

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In the 1949 Film Noir T-Men (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Men) I watched last night, a lady photographer working a nightclub with a Speed Graphic w/flash removes the film holder from the camera, composes, snaps the shutter, and then reinserts the holder back into the camera. I believe this was the second time I've seen that in old movies. I'm not familiar with the Speed Graphic.

Tomas
 
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