Smallest camera made before the War?

ciniframe said:

Yep, those Bantam’s with the f4.5 are tiny. And if my memory serves the negative size is 28x40mm. That’s really big for 35mm film. Now, if only we could convince Ilford and Kodak to offer a good selection of 35mm bulk without the perfs. I can see two purposes for this, 1. Easy to slit two 16mm size rolls and 2. to reload 828 spools. I think (but do not know) that punching the prefs is the last step in finishing 35mm film. So why can’t they just skip that step for a batch and spool into regular 100 ft. bulk rolls.

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I have a bulk roll of unperforated ORWO UN54 that I use for my 828 film. It would be nice to have it properly perforated but it works just as well without. I bought it on eBay a few years ago but I think they come up every now and then.

I can recut 120 for 828 and get a 16 mm strip as well, plus a Minox strip at 8.7 mm if I had one of those cameras, or get three 16 mm strips without the edge markings (or four 15.5 mm with edge markings on two, still usable in Minolta 16 family, at least).

Yes, 828 has a 28x40 mm frame, almost the size of half frame 127, but long way on the film so the camera can be even smaller. I've got a Bantam RF with f/4.5 triplet, but the Bantam is significantly smaller (the Bantam RF is comparable to a Pony 828 for size).

My smallest folder is the Ensign Midget from 1934:

90 x45 x 20mm

Image size 3 x 4 cm

My smallest is a Tessina L which shoots 35mm respooled half frame [single frame]. It is twin mirror twin lens reflex.

But the Tessina is from 1957. A super small 35mm SLR, but Donald is interested in pre-war cameras.

AgX said:

My smallest folder is the Ensign Midget from 1934:

90 x45 x 20mm

Image size 3 x 4 cm

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That's very comparable to my Baby Ikonta (which is at home just now and I'm not) -- visibly smaller in all dimensions than a Rollei 35 with lens retracted. Whatever it is, it seems it'll be a 3x4 on 127, since the strut folding Bantam is actually the same width as a VPK and about the same height; barely thinner. Now I wonder if I can find one with the kind of lenses that got on some 35mm folders by the late 1930s -- even an f/2.8 triplet like the one on my Jubilette (so far, the best I've seen on a Baby Ikonta on eBay is f/3.5 Novar -- still a good step up from the f/6.3 I have), in a better shutter than the three-speed Derval? The limitation is going to be the shutter; start putting a full Compur #0 in there (to hold an f/2.8) and you wind up having to bulge the bed to get it to close.

BTW, the Tessina is actually a TLR, not an SLR...

Yes, I always, at midst of the night, get confused with the Tessina, never had one in hand, not even came close to one.

AgX said:

But the Tessina is from 1957. A super small 35mm SLR, but Donald is interested in pre-war cameras.

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What if I used old film?

Donald Qualls said:

BTW, the Tessina is actually a TLR, not an SLR...

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TMTLR is more accurate.

Sirius Glass said:

What if I used old film?

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Actually I wondered why Donald made that time limit. To limit the number of cameras to talk about, or as the postwar manufacturing technology changed?
Maybe he tells us.

AgX said:

Actually I wondered why Donald made that time limit. To limit the number of cameras to talk about, or as the postwar manufacturing technology changed?
Maybe he tells us.

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Only use old light meters too.

AgX said:

wondered why Donald made that time limit. To limit the number of cameras to talk about, or as the postwar manufacturing technology changed?
Maybe he tells us.

Click to expand...

I like folders -- but I don't always have big pockets. The smallest roll film camera will surely be a folder, but really small folders pretty much vanished by the early 1950s; 35 mm went to solid bodies of one sort or another, and medium format was bigger folders and TLRs until the 6x6 and 6x7 SLRs came out. I figured it might be a proprietary format; 127 went to 4x4 (almost?) exclusively (and I don't know that there was ever a 4x4 folder), and 828 was all solid body after WWII; the Bantam I just got is as small as those got (the art deco Bantam Special RF folder is bigger). In a way, I was asking if there was anything I could look for that's smaller than my Baby Ikonta -- and the answer seems to be, not much if any smaller, and possibly not a quality photographic tool if it is.

My Weltini is close to being as small as a full frame 35mm rangefinder can get (it's a little thicker than an Olympus XA, but has a faster and less wide lens); my Balda Jubilette is smaller by the amount of space the RF takes up. A Vollenda 48 or Baby Ikonta (or Ensign Midget) is close to being as small as a 127 camera can get. 828 had potential, with 10 mm shorter spools and slightlyb smaller spool diameter, but the 40 mm frame with a relatively large gutter between frames constrains the width of the camera to "not much smaller than a VPK".

Yeah, there was Minox, and I've got several Minolta format 16mm cameras, but those are so small they're a serious drop risk as one's hands get older -- and they're also too small to reliably stay in a pocket that isn't so tight as to cause excessive wear on the camera (not to mention pockets are full of dust and lint -- folders do a better job protecting their lens from this stuff than subminis, in my experience).

The Jilona Midget was invented in 1937 by Jiro Nakamura. He also invented the 17.5mm rollfilm format, This was the origin of the “HIT” type cameras, and is a fully competent camera using a three element 22mm fl f6.8 lens. It takes really really good pictures!

Oh, nice. I wasn't aware there were any of those good enough to bother -- or that they predated WWII. I guess all the rest are cheap knock-offs of the Midget. I know about the "Yen cameras" that took single paper negatives and cost, yep, one Yen, but this must have been a lot more than that. That's what, a 14x14 mm image? So a little bigger than the original Minolta 16 format...