[Leica] Leica and Minox, OT and a long post.

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Minox and Leica

First let me say that Minox is not an inferior brand. It is a well respected
marque amongst a dedicated sector of camera fans as committed to their view
of photography as Leica is by members of the LUG. (www.subclub.org) During
the period from the late 30s through the 80s, sub-miniature cameras were
prized and increased in features and complexity until they rivaled, and
often exceeded the best 35 mm cameras of the era. Some also cost just about
as much.

Small size and portability has been a long time goal of camera users. Every
film size had its version of folding or collapsible lens cameras. Even my
4x5 Speed Graphic could collapse down to half it's picture taking size.
Oskar Barnack developed the original Leica, not because he was in love with
the 36x18 mm format, but because he wanted a small camera to carry with him
on his hiking trips. The fact that it could use the cheap, left over, ends
of commercial movie films was an added bonus. As films got better, cameras
got smaller. Sure, 35mm fans got better pictures, still not as good as the
prevailing 6x6 cm and 6x9 cm favorites of photojournalists, but
sub-miniature cameras produced adequate pictures for many users with much
smaller and more pocketable cameras.

The smallest precision sub-miniature camera was probably the Minox.
Constructed with a precision exceeding that of the Leica or Contax, the
chewing gum package sized Minox sported an extremely high resolution 15mm
Complan lens. It took up to 50 8x11mm images on a tiny film cassette. A full
Minox kit included a specialized developing tank that used only 2 oz. of
solution and an enlarger specifically designed to extract the maximum of
image quality from the tiny negative. While the Minox was not the Rolls
Royce of sub-miniatures, it was certainly the BMW.

Other quality sub-miniatures of the era were the Goerz Minicord, a dual lens
reflex camera with a 25mm 6 element f2.0 lens which made 10x10mm images on
16 mm film stock. The Gami camera, also with a 25mm f2.0 lens, made 12x17mm
images on unperforated 16mm film stock. Opening the camera cocked the
shutter, transported the film and allowed 3 exposures to be made as fast as
you could press the shutter release. Even Rollei got into the act with the
Rollei 16. Rollei's entry into the sub-miniature field had an F2.0 lens and
automatic exposure. It took 12x17 exposures on 16mm film. Once Kodak
introduced the 110 format, a number of other makers got into the
sub-miniature act, including Minolta with a full featured auto everything
SLR camera about the size of today's 4/3 models, Pentax, with the tiniest
ever SLR, Agfa, Kodak and even Minox.

What killed the sub-minature was that it ran up against the technical
tsunami of digital photography. Even with the best available films, the
small frames could contain only so much information. The Minox maxed out at
about 2 megabytes. The Gami and the Rollei 16 at about 3.5 megabytes. Second
generation digitals could easily exceed that performance. Further the larger
sub-miniatures were bigger than the Rollei 35, the 1966 era camera that came
closest to Oskar Barnack's intention. By this time Leica had grown to a
relatively heavy and certainly unpocketable size.

Today, 35mm film cameras are encountering the same technological limit as
the sub-miniatures did 25 years ago. Including your prized Leica. With
current film stock, no more than 14 megabytes of information can be encoded
in a single frame. I don't want to quibble about this point. Some may
squeeze more information into a 35mm frame, most of us get less. But modern
digital cameras, especially those with full frame sensors can easily exceed
film's information storage capability.

The upshot is that Minox didn't die by poor management. To survive it
branched out into 110 and 35mm cameras, binoculars, and mini replicas of
bigger cameras. But it's pocketable Minox cash cow died. It simply became
technologically obsolete. Like the typewriter and the slide rule. They all
still function for their intended purpose, but unless you are a Luddite or a
spy, why bother?

I own samples of most of the sub-miniature cameras I mentioned. Look them up
on the internet. They are marvelous examples of precision engineering. But I
haven't used them in years. My tiny and very pocketable Canon 780, smaller
and lighter than any precision sub-miniature except the Minox III, exceeds
the capabilities of all of them by a large margin.

Larry Z