Seiki 16 pistol camera
The Seiki 16 pistol camera is a Japanese subminiature taking 10×14mm pictures on 16mm film, shaped as a pistol and made by Seiki Kōgaku in the late 1940s or early 1950s.
Contents
Description
The camera is shaped as a pistol, but is less realistic than the Doryu 2-16 or Gemmy. There is a folding frame finder at the top, which is perhaps removable.[1] There is a fake lens at the position of the pistol's nozzle, and the actual 25mm f/3.5 lens is situated in a recession situated below.[2] It has fixed focus and aperture.
The camera takes 16mm film in Mamiya 16 cassettes. There is a wheel on the left side, driven by the user's thumb, certainly used to advance the film, and a small window on the same side for an exposure counter. The shutter is certainly tripped by the trigger located in front of the handgrip. Another button is visible under the trigger, perhaps used to open and lock the camera for film loading. The speeds are selected by a small index on the rear, below the advance wheel, with 100, 50, 25, B positions.
The name Seiki 16 and the company name SEIKI KOGAKU CO. are inscribed on the right side. Another illegible inscription appears on the left, under the exposure counter window.
Origin
The camera was certainly a derivative of the Seiki 16 subminiature made by the same company. The relatively large number of pistol-shaped models appearing in Japan in the late 1940s or early 1950s suggests that they were answering some official program, perhaps to provide training cameras for the Japanese police at a time when the use of actual firearms was certainly very restricted.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Sugiyama, item 5132, provides two pictures of the camera, supposedly showing the same example. The viewfinder is deployed on the left picture but seems altogether absent on the right one, perhaps because it was removed.
- ↑ 25mm f/3.5: Sugiyama, item 5132.
- ↑ This page at Submin.com says that both Seiki 16 models were "introduced in 1950 for the Japanese police", but this certainly applies only to the pistol-shaped model.
Bibliography
- Sugiyama, Kōichi (杉山浩一); Naoi, Hiroaki (直井浩明); Bullock, John R. The Collector's Guide to Japanese Cameras. 国産カメラ図鑑 (Kokusan kamera zukan). Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1985. ISBN 4-257-03187-5. Item 5132.
The Seiki 16 pistol camera is not listed in Kokusan kamera no rekishi.
Links
In English:
- Seiki subminiature cameras (text only) at Submin.com
- Seiki subminiature cameras (text only) at Subclub.org