Camera gun - GIF

[Jon]

Camera gun.




Previously:

Traffic camera monitor on back of truck - GIF

[bruce.desertrat]

Old, old trick for managing long tele's like this.

A couple of DIY ones from Pop Mechanics

I can't find it right now, but I also saw an article in an issue from the 40's or 50's that used a real gunstock from a 22 rifle.


I'm tempted to build one for myself; I have a itty-bitty Pentax Q10 DLSR that I have an adapter for my old screw-mount 35MM lenses; a 135mm telephoto ends up being the equivalent of about a 750mm lens; an F2.2 750 mm-equivalent telephoto is quite a good lens; but is damned near impossible to use hand-held, and if I stick my bigger zoom lens on it it IS impossible to hand-hold.

[ranald]

When travelling in Tassie at Cradle Mtn, I spotted a bird near the designated walking track. I gave hand signals to my wife & she spotted the endanged species bird and attempted to shoot from the other side of the bush from where I was trying to get a clear shot. My pereferal vision picked up someone approach from behind her. He left & returned with a camera with a 3' lens: 2 clicks is all i heard. He beckoned me over to look at his shot. The Korean guy got a great pic & we were still trying after about 20 attempts from me & 50 from my partner.
C'est la vie!

[NeiljohnUK]

Zenith's 'photo-sniper' updated, though with all the current 'security' issues around the world your likely to run into someone pointing a real firearm at you at some point, or get you cut down by an Apache...

[PJs]

Old, old trick for managing long tele's like this.

A couple of DIY ones from Pop Mechanics

I can't find it right now, but I also saw an article in an issue from the 40's or 50's that used a real gunstock from a 22 rifle.


I'm tempted to build one for myself; I have a itty-bitty Pentax Q10 DLSR that I have an adapter for my old screw-mount 35MM lenses; a 135mm telephoto ends up being the equivalent of about a 750mm lens; an F2.2 750 mm-equivalent telephoto is quite a good lens; but is damned near impossible to use hand-held, and if I stick my bigger zoom lens on it it IS impossible to hand-hold.

Nice Camera Bruce.desertrat, impressive lens on that puppy (1:1.9, 40.5mm). Dad and I built one of these camera guns in the mid 60's with the Asahi Pentax K1000 he brought back from an R&R in the PI, and used it with the 175 mm he got with it. Don't remember where we got the stock but it was used and worked great. Cable drove the shutter to the trigger. Got some slides somewhere we took up in the Yola Bolly range area of some critters way off and Hawk in flight. If I were to make one now I'd probably add an attachable mono-pod for stability. I have an old C5050 with a couple of lenses that this might be good for dinking around. great little camera for the vintage although only 5mpx. Still have Dad's K1000 and all the gear with it too...hum...getting film though is a problem.

[Jon]

Thompson's revolver camera.



3:00 video:

More: http://collection.sciencemuseum.org....-camera-camera

[PJs]

Like the guy says, if someone pointed it at you, you'd probably run a mile. The craftsmanship is beautiful and the mechanism pretty ingenious to rotate 4 plates for successive shots. Most in those days were Daquerreotype, single plates and laborious to setup and operate...then you had to develop to the plates quickly. I can see the point of multiple shots but only made for the rich and infamous, for sure. I am curious what kind of plate and development process this used.

I found this article with some Poor pics of the inside and plate sizes.

Here is a website in French that has some better pics but a great pic of an early camera rifle gun with a circular magazine...that looks like a "Veiw Master" slide...again multiple shots.

Google Translated some of it.

"The late nineteenth century is marked by the double figure of almost exactly contemporary inventors of genius, the Burgundy bourguignon Etienne-Jules Marey (March 5, 1830 - May 21, 1904) and the English-born American Eadweard J. Muybridge (April 9 1830 - May 8, 1904), both passionate about chronophotography. You surely know their superb series of photographs which break down the march of the man, the paces of the horse, the movement of the fencers or the flight of the seagull. The principle of their inventions will subsequently be very accurately taken up and developed by the Lumière brothers. They are therefore for many historians the real fathers of the cinematograph. A downside however: if they were very passionate about the recording of moving object they used for their research, they were not interested at all in the problem of the subsequent projection of these images.

Picture goes here.

Marey, the first, modifies a shotgun and invents the famous photographic rifle that includes a roll of flexible film to quickly take several pictures in succession, and thus break down the movements. The rifle is built at the end of 1881 and used in the early months of 1882:

"I have a photographic rifle that is not deadly, and that takes the image of a flying bird, or a running animal, in a less than 1/500 of a second. if you can imagine this speed, but it's something surprising. " (EJ Marey - letter to his mother of February 3, 1882 [2])

Michel Frizot, a CNRS researcher and professor of the history of photography is a great specialist in the work of Étienne-Jules Marey. He devoted several books and articles to him. In "New History of Photography", an exciting and monumental work (4.7 kg, a monster in every sense of the word), he adds:

"Designed as a real shotgun with aiming on the shoulder, the camera has a lens in the barrel, and a cylinder head in which a sensitive plate rotates, when pressed on the trigger." The rotating plate gelatin-bromide of silver, stops twelve times behind the lens, while the shutter lets the light through for 1/720 of a second "[3]

Less discreet and less manageable but the quality of the images undoubtedly superior, note also the wonderful Kilburn gun camera (circa 1882-1886): a large-format 4x5 inch mahogany mounted on a cherry base that could be fixed on a rifle butt."

Thanks Jon! Great rabbit hole dive.

PJ