Early
HOME MOVIE photography
SHORT HISTORY
The first "real" movie cameras (and projectors)
arrived in the late 1890's.
It evolved after a long period of inventions
like the Magic Lanterns and projectors creating the illusions of movement
from mechanical moving slides, flip books etc...
The movie camera of those days looked like
the wooden-box cameras but with a hand crank for rolling the film.
The early popular film was 35mm and
later the half width (17.5mm).
Also, there were all kinds of film-sizes like:
15,13,22 ,28 and the 9.5mm.
In the 1920's the 16mm film was introduced,
KODAK joined the 'club' with it's KODAK CINE line of movie cameras thus
making the 16mm film very popular in America while the 9.5mm film (Pathe)
ruled in Europe.
From 1920's on, amateur/home movie photography
became very popular! Toys like/projectors as the KEYSTONE (Moviegraph)
with B/W short-silent-movies and other more expensive home cameras &projectors
were popular.
In 1932 Kodak introduced the Cine Eight-20
camera for it's NEW 8mm film! and many companies joined in
to develop movie cameras for the new 8mm film to become the ruler in home
filming. The last step was in 1965 - the Super-8 film was born! allowing
the film to contain sound track (in the 1970's) but then the VIDEO
CAMERA was born and changed the home-films into home-videos....
MOVIE CAMERAS / PROJECTORS
Click on the pictures for more info. on each
FROM SLIDES TO MOVIES:
top
to bottom:
- Early slide:wood frame+glass
- Victorian:hand painted glass slide (1800's)
- EP magic lantern glass-slide (1920?)
- early 35mm film: moving drawings |
film's
size:
Super 8
8mm (regular)
9.5mm
16mm
35mm |
Heavy duty MAGIC LANTERNs / slides
projectors
illuminated by GAS
(Click on the pic. for more details)
Typical tin (Toy) MAGIC LANTERNs of the
1900's
illuminated by an oil lamp
(Click on the pic. for more details)
KEYSTONE MOVIEGRAPH Projector, USA, 1920's(35MM)
PATHE home projector, FRANCE,
1920s (9.5MM)
the ROOSTER logo of the PATHE company
PATHEORAMA 35mm film viewer (toy?),
FRANCE, 1920s
* click on the pic for more details
on the Patheorama
PATHE baby movie cameras, FRANCE,
1920s (9.5MM)
1923-25 : Hand-crank - one rotation
= 8 frames on the left
1926-27 : spring motor (double
sized and heavy!) on the right
CINE KODAK Model K, USA, 1930-1946 (16MM)
UNIVEX A8, UNIVERSAL, USA, 1936 (8MM)
KEYSTONE K-8, USA, 1930's -40's(8MM)
FILMO COMPANION, BELL & HOWELL, USA,
1941(Double-8MM)
EKRAN 3, RUSSIA, 1960'S(8mm)
ELMO GP DUAL 8 PROJECTOR (I
used it in the 1970s)
For 8 or super-8 films (syncronization
of the film with a tape recorder)
From the COLLECTOR's POINT
OF VIEW
Movie camera collection is starting to gain
popularity - with the difficulties of: SPACE & WEIGHT (Those cameras
& projectors are BIG and HEAVY)
The good news: the price of most of the movie
cameras are relative low (meanwhile...)
REFERENCES
* A good
reference book is the "History of Movie Photography" by Brian Coe
Jump to the BOOKS
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