Cameras for Undisclosed Locations
Photo by Matt Blaze
April, 2005. Now over fifty years old, the Minox
III was said to have been popular among cold-war-era spies
not only for discretely copying secret documents, but also
as distracting foreground props in snapshots of foreign
intellegence bases. One of the smallest mechanical
cameras ever commercially produced (at just over three
inches long), it can record up to fifty 8x11mm frames on a
single film cartridge. The sharp 15mm f/3.5 lens zone
focuses from infinity down to about eight inches. The
whole system (along with appropriately miniaturized
accessories such as copy stands and light meters) was
designed to be easily concealed, although the metal case
would be betrayed by a modern magnetometer.
Image taken with a Nikon D2x digital camera and 10.5mm
f/2.8 DX fisheye lens.
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