taildraggin wrote:
My very 1st camera (1971?) was a "clockwork Ricoh" 126 C Automatic. It looked like Dad's Leica rangefinder and it had a spring winder on the bottom for "automatic" cocking of the shutter and film advance. It shot 126 cartridges, had a 40mm/2.8 lens and used flashcubes.
(126 was 26x26mm, so it's square with a crop factor of 1.09.)
I just picked up a Robot Star 50, a later (1969) incarnation of the OG clockwork Robot from the '30s. 24x24mm on 135 film (I got 57 shots on my first roll).
The 50 has the double height wind knob and can shoot a whole roll if it's fully wound, albeit with slower film advance toward the end. Special take-up cartridge is required, the early ones also required a special supply cartridge.
Schneider lenses range from 30mm to 150mm, mine has the 38mm 2.8 Xenar.
They were popular for espionage during the cold war, and there are remote triggering options, special unobtrusive lenses and silenced versions available.
Desmolicious wrote:
Has anyone already mentioned the Contax RTS III w its vacuum pressure plate to keep the film perfectly flat?
Yes and, furthermore, the RTS III had the flash-exposure lock that I believe was unique in the film era (and patented). To use, you fired the OEM flash with a camera lever, and the needed exposure was locked into camera memory. Film exposures were then illuminated by that calculated level of flash. The level was persistent until the lever was released.
Another Kyocera innovation was the Contax AX with AF capability provided to a system that only offered manual-focus lenses. The body had a complete AF sensor implementation coupled to a motorized film train. So, the entire film assembly (rails, sprockets, back plate) would move to bring the image into focus. Crazy stuff that actually worked.
