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MINOX B

mionoxB.jpg

I don't think there is any other camera that is as detailed and beautiful as this one. It is a super-compact camera that appears in old spy movies. The beauty and precision of the finish surpasses that of Rollei and Leica.
INOX was born in Latvia, one of the three Baltic states, in 1938, and production was moved to West Germany after the war. The MINOX B was made in West Germany and released in 1958. Although it is an ultra-compact camera, it has a shutter speed of 1/1000 second from slow to 1/1000 second, and the distance can be adjusted from 0.2 meters to infinity by eye using a helicoid. A bright frame is used in the viewfinder, and parallax is automatically corrected. The lens does not have an aperture, and an ND filter is built in so that it is always used wide open (F3.5).
It has a built-in selenium exposure meter, and the ASA sensitivity can be set from 25 to 400 using a needle. When using an ND filter, the sensitivity of the exposure meter is automatically switched, so there is no need to worry about the magnification when shooting.
Film advance and shutter charging are done simultaneously by a series of actions of inserting and removing the case. Pushing the case in advances one piece of film, and pulling it out charges the shutter. When the case is pushed in, the lens and viewfinder are hidden and the shutter is locked to prevent accidental use.
Furthermore, with a lens this small, there is a large amount of aberration caused by the curvature of the lens, but in order to correct this aberration, the film pressure plate is curved to improve image quality.
It's amazing that such an intricate mechanism can be contained in such a small body.
The design concept is also extremely original. Minox does not have a built-in aperture or distance measuring system. However, because the focal length of the lens is extremely short, the depth of field is extremely deep. If set to 4M, it will focus from 2M to infinity, and eyeballing is sufficient for shooting. The disadvantage of omitting the rangefinder and aperture in order to make the camera ultra-compact is eliminated by the deep depth of field achieved by the compact size. Also, being able to shoot with the aperture fully open means that a high-speed shutter can be used, which is advantageous for handheld shooting. In this way, the design concept of the camera is extremely unique, yet clear and rational.
The image quality is also very good. The graininess is unavoidable due to the small size of the film, but the lens is an excellent lens with ultra-high resolution and extremely sharp images.
Despite its unique mechanism and design concept, it is a camera with such a perfect world. I don't think there has been a camera with such a good design since the introduction of Minox.
I like how when I take pictures of Tokyo with this camera, the film has a rough grain and looks somewhat nostalgic.

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