Minim
The Minim is a strut-folding camera for 4.5x6cm ('vest pocket') plates or film-packs, made by Thornton-Pickard in about 1912. It has a focal-plane shutter with speeds 1/15 - 1/1000 second, plus 'T', which is self-capping (that is, it remains light-tight while it is being tensioned).[1]
The camera was offered with a range of lenses, striking in that they are all either good or excellent; there are no cheap otions:
- Cooke Series IIIa f/3.5 (price 10 pounds, 10 shillings)
- Goerz Dagor Series III f/6.8 (price 11 pounds, 10 shillings)
- Voigtländer Heliar f/4.5 (price 11 pounds, 10 shillings)
- Carl Zeiss Tessar f/4.5 (price 11 pounds, 10 shillings)
The body of the camera is aluminium, with black leather covering and bellows. It has a table-stand on the front plate, so that it will stand upright on a table in vertical orientation. It was supplied with six single plate-holders, and leather cases for the camera and for the holders. A film-pack holder was also offered.
The cited advertisement calls the Minim the smallest self-capping focal-plane camera in the world.
Notes
- ↑ Thornton-Pickard advertisements in the British Journal Almanac' for 1913, reproduced at Pacific Rim Camera. The Minim is on p212 of the Almanac (p26 of the document as reproduced). 27MB PDF.