Adrian Michel Pigeon Camera
The Adrian Michel Pigeon camera is a subminiature camera from the 1930s, designed by the Swiss Christian Adrian Michel to be attached to a trained pigeon for reconnaissance photographs. To be clear, the pigeon is simply trained to fly home and to tolerate the camera, attached to it by a harness; it does not operate the camera. Rather, this has a time delay, before a short series of photographs is exposed.
The body of the camera is made from a light alloy, and painted black. It makes a series of 10x36mm panoramic exposures on 16mm film.[1][2][3] The panoramic function of the camera is like that of the Kodak Panoram cameras, with the lens attached by a cloth tube, and swinging during the exposure. The panorama is to the front and rear of the pigeon, not across the direction of flight.
The delay timer can be set up to an hour and ten minutes. 'Six or seven exposures' are then made about every thirty seconds.[3] Clearly, the user would have to know the bird's speed quite precisely. The camera has three clockworks to be wound (presumably, these are for the delay timer, the exposure interval timer, and the power for the exposures themselves; the shutter and lens movement and the film advance). It is not clear what the difference between models 'A' and 'B' is.
Notes
- ↑ Adrian Michel camera 'model A' serial no. 948 with instructions etc. , sold for 9400 UK pounds at Sale 9509 by Christie's on 19 November 2002.
- ↑ Adrian Michel camera 'model B' serial no. 937, sold for 7170 UK pounds at Christie's Sale 9965, on 16 November 2004.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Adrian Michel camera serial 937 sold again, for €18 000, at the 36th Leitz Photographica Auction, on 13 June 2020.
