Darling and Weird Camera
Mar. 4th, 2011 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreIt uses 16mm movie film on a spool. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes (or two iPhone 4s). Like all twin-lens reflex cameras, you look in the top and the taking lens is the bottom one. The eBay auction for this camera has more pictures. It dates to around 1951.
In the early days, most German lens makers expressed their focal lengths in centimeters. I'm not exactly sure when it changed, but by the 70s, everyone was using millimeters. (2,5cm can be mistaken for 25cm, so 25 vs. 250 is clearer.) Leica seems to have switched over between 1952 (date of my earlier lenses) and 1959 (date of the lens I received today). An interesting point: some expressed focal length in cm but focus distance only in feet. Weird, huh? I'm always fascinated by mixing of metric and imperial units -- like knitters measuring in yards but buying skeins in grams.
In the early days, most German lens makers expressed their focal lengths in centimeters. I'm not exactly sure when it changed, but by the 70s, everyone was using millimeters. (2,5cm can be mistaken for 25cm, so 25 vs. 250 is clearer.) Leica seems to have switched over between 1952 (date of my earlier lenses) and 1959 (date of the lens I received today). An interesting point: some expressed focal length in cm but focus distance only in feet. Weird, huh? I'm always fascinated by mixing of metric and imperial units -- like knitters measuring in yards but buying skeins in grams.