[Leica] Square 35 mm film negatives

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

Harrison asks:
"What kind of camera shot a square negative about 1 inch square?"
- - - -
Several different types of cameras shot square negatives. Measure the
negative carefully to find out which it probably was. Instamatic cameras
shot 28 mm square images, usually masked down to 26 mm. Robot cameras shot
24 mm square images. A few other German cameras also shot square images,
usually 24 mm, but they were quite rare on the US side of the Atlantic.
There was a short lived Super Slide format, 40 x 40 mm, used for mounting
color images from 127 and 120 film.

Robot cameras were fairly plentiful during the 50s and 60s, especially
amongst sports photographers. They were just about the only way you could
snap off 3 or 4 pictures a second with a hand held camera. (Except for the
Foton a truly rare bird.) I have 3 of them, one a first generation 1936
Robot 1, the other two post WW2 Robot Vollautomat Star II cameras, a 25 and
a 50. I had another, an early Robot Star which unfortunately got submerged
in a boating accident. Robots for consumer use were being made until 1996
and Robot-Berning still makes industrial cameras based on the original
design.

Trivia: Robots with silenced nylon gears were favorite espionage cameras.
They were placed in a briefcase or handbag with a lens protruding through a
small opening. They would take a picture every time a button on the handle
was pressed. Are you sure your father wasn't a spy?

Larry Z