Time can see - or photo camera on your wrist

Subminiature Photo Camera Watches - Spy Watches

Once I think I've seen everything, somebody alerts me a mind-blowing gadget like this Steineck Subminiature Wrist-camera. Thanks to Max Busser, founder of MB&F Horological Machines who shared his find from a vintage watch store in Lugano, Switzerland. Needless to say, I've been obsessed these antique spy gadgets for the last few days and have uncovered a secret force of "Submini" wrist-cameras. A wide array of styles existed over many different eras, originating in 1907 with a pocket watch camera. Others were fit into rings, some were undisguised miniature cameras fit onto a wristband but my favorite remains the Steineck, with its robotic cyclops face and potential for Captain Kirk-ian prop-weaponry!

It all began with these patent designs from 1907 for the first concealed camera in a pocket watch. Later marketed as the "Ticka"  with dummy watch face permanently set at 7 minutes past 10 o'clock indicating the viewing angle making it possible to use without the detachable viewfinder. Exposing unsuspecting subjects on a cassette of 17.5mm film and the lens is hidden by the watch crown.

An original Ticka with packaging

Ticka's fixed 7-past-10 dummy dial

The above mentioned Steineck produced from the late forties into the fifties. Invented by Dr. Rudolph Steineck of Switzerland and highly regarded as one of the better quality subminiature cameras made. Uses a 24mm circular film disk and automatic film advance. The viewfinder is a reflex concave mirror with a sharp centre line pointer, which permits sighting from above when the camera, worn on the wrist, is held in picture-taking position. Through the centre of the camera is a hole, an alternative direct-vision viewfinder.

A complex mechanism

The worlds first wrist-camera was created by Japanese inventor, Jujiro Ichiki in 1939.

1950s Pixie Wrist Camera

1960 Tessina Cameras featured the only subminiature watch that uses standard 35mm film but is the size of 16mm cameras. A rare version exisits for the wristand one with a Swiss watch attachment . Made up of 400 parts and built by Concava of Switzerland, the Tessina was also designed and patented by Dr. Rudolph Steineck.

Tessina with watch attachment

1981 Magnacam Wristamatic invented by Bernard Seckendorf of New York. Not a spy camera but rather intended to be "on hand" for active sports. travel, sightseeing.

Also from 1981, the Italian Ferro Ring camera. Very high quality and even had accessories. The lens was a fixed-focus 10mm with a variable shutter of B, 1/30 - 1/500. It takes special 25mm diameter discs of film and produces six 4.5x6mm images.

Gold plated Ferro Ring Watch with case

Here's one I wish existed. An impressive and ambitious 1940 Patent shows this K.M. French design for a wrist-attached camera complete with expanding bellows.

 
information from bp0.blogger.com

Secret photography

Secret photography  sometimes called "covert photography", but this is a term used mostly among professional investigators.
Sometimes normal cameras are used, but the photographer is concealed. Sometimes the photo camera itself is disguised or concealed. Some obvious element of concealment or great distance is generally needed to make such photography fall under the category of 'secret photography' rather than street photography or documentary photography.

Paul Strand: Wall Street, 1915

It has been in use by British police since intelligence gathering on the suffragette movement in the 1900s.Some classic early U.S. street photography - such as that of Paul Strand on the Lower East Side - was obtained by fixing a second "dummy lens" to the camera, whereas the real shot was taken from the side. Although spy cameras small enough to fit inside a pocket watch had existed since the 1880s, since the 1950s advances in miniaturisation and electronics has greatly aided the ability to conceal miniature cameras, and the quality and affordability ofspy cameras has now greatly increased. Some consumer compact digital cameras are now so small that in previous decades they would have qualified as "spy cameras", and digital cameras of 5 megapixels or more are now being embedded in some mobile camera phones.
Some fine art photographers have displayed a fascination with the forms of secret voyeuristic photography.
MINOX

Minox B camera

The Minox is a subminiature camera. The Minox was invented by Walter Zapp in 1936.He became friends with Nikolai 'Nixi' Nylander and Richard Jürgens, and it was through discussions with these friends that the idea of a photographic camera that could always be carried came to him. Nixi Nylander also coined the name MINOX and drew up the Minox mouse logo. Jürgens funded the original project but was not able to get support in Estonia for production. Jürgens contacted an English representative of the VEF (Country Electrotehnik Manufacture) electrotechnical manufacturing concern in Riga.The original Riga-made Minox had a brass chassis covered in a stainless steel shell, which telescopes to reveal or cover the lens and viewfinder windows, as well as to advance the film. It was equipped with a parallax correcting viewfinder, which was coupled to a Cooke triplet type Minostigmat 15 mm/3.5 lens. The lens was capable of focusing as close as 20 cm, and, due to its small image size, provided such depth of field at full aperture that a diaphragm was deemed unnecessary. The maximum focus zone was about one meter to infinity. In front of the lens was a metal foil curtain shutter, which was itself protected by a window. These were advanced features at the time for any camera, regardless of size. Measurements: 80 mm x 27 mm x 16 mm; weight: 130 g.
Minox was acquired by Leica in 1996.

information from wikipedia.org