Nikon Cameras: Cameras were now so reduced in bulk they could be held in the hand. The photographer was freed from tb need to carry a tripod wherever he went. A bewilderinj array of hand cameras appeared on the market. Some hel( several plates in a magazine, so that photographers coulc take a dozen or more exposures in rapid succession. Be cause these cameras allowed exposures to be made sur repdtiously, they were often called "detective cameras.' They were given fanciful names. Here are a few of thi more popular mass-produced hand cameras of the lati nineteenth century:
In 1932 Zeiss Ikon brought out a similar camera, the Contax; it featured a built-in rangefinder coupled with the focusing mechanism so that by simply rotating the lens until a double image of the subject became single, the photographer was assured that the image would be in focus. Soon lenses with apertures as large as //1.5 were offered for the Leica, the Contax, and a host of other 35mm rangefinder cameras. A further refinement was the provision of single-lens reflex viewing on a ground glass observed at eye level through a prism, as in the highly popular nikon cameras F, introduced shortly after World War II by Zeiss Ikon of Dresden as the Contax S. |
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