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

[douglas.sharp at gmx.de (Douglas Sharp)]

Hi Larry,

very enjoyable reading - my uncle Jack picked up a 
beautifully made, and IIRR, very advanced, Yashica many 
years ago when he was working for BOAC in Hong Kong,, 
though I'm not quite sure what format it was.

No indeed, the Walter Zapp cameras were anything but 
cheap and tacky - I believe that is precisely why Leica 
was interested in Minox. As I mentioned, a brand with 
with a Leica-like charisma.

For anyone else with an interest in Minox and other 
sub-min cameras, I found this site:

http://www.frugalphotographer.com/catMinoxFilm.htm

Cheers
Douglas

On 16.06.2011 23:37, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:
> 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
>
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