Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/13/auction-of-exquisitely-odd-antique-cameras-that-look-like-guns.html
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As rare as these two specific cameras might be. This isn’t particularly odd. Pistol grips were common in small 16mm movie cameras, and kind of default in 8mm. It gives a nice stable shot without extra equipment.
9.5mm film was apparently originally a home movie stock. Though no clue if that particular camera was meant for stills or what, looks small for motion. They likely mimicked the format of home movie and small motion picture cameras for the same reasons.
Likewise rifle stock cameras are and were a thing. I think it was Nikon most famous for it. Same idea, stabilization. In this case for very long telephoto stills. Especially in wildlife and sports photography.
People actually still make them from time to time by altering rifle stocks.
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Pro tip: don’t try to film the cops with those cameras.
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On the one hand, it might be awesome ffor stabilizing your shot
On the other hand, I have enough problems with people interrupting my work. Do you have feathers and a beak? The go away, you’re not my intended subject.
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I feel like at some point they were trying to sell photography as a substitute for hunting, or is that just in my head?
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How does that work with a camera mounted on it?
horribly scratchy sound, though.
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NOTE- These mounts/stocks are intended for wildlife photography/spotting… it is potentially a really bad idea to go wandering downtown after dark with one. By purchasing one of our SharpShooter Camera mounts you agree that we are not responsible for your actions, nor those of third parties.*
Nice disclaimer on their website.
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Oh man… look at that lens… The best lens I have for my film camera is a 100-300mm Japanese made Canon lens. Nothing so nice.
You could really say that about any long, dark object at night, including just a regular camera with a zoom lens. I saw people pointing to a camera on some sort of a mount being a gun from that St. Louis couple footage - and that was in day light.
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Nice? Slightly tone deaf, IMHO.
Same skillset, really. Except that a gun is longer range. Maybe a better comparison is with bow hunting,.
People used to go on Safaris to hunt. Now, a good many are deisgned around thhe needs of photographers.
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It comes from wildlife photography. The idea is that you get a stable shooting platform off your shoulder, and position your hands off the camera, but close to the controls. The stock can support both the camera body and a long lens. And it’s very fast and easy to aim, move and reorient the camera while shooting. Particularly when kneeling, lying prone, or crammed in a fast moving vehicle or something like a tree stand. While shooting fast moving or skittish subjects. Hence sports and wildlife.
They don’t seem to have ever been particularly successful commercially, since they’re very niche. Don’t do a ton that conventional shoulder mounts, gimble rigs or even a strap doesn’t. Seem to have peaked in the 70’s when very long, extreme telephoto lenses first became broadly available. And modern image stabilization nuked a lot of the benefits.
On top of that it’s not a great idea to go waving around what looks like a sniper rifle from space. And never particularly was.
Seem to mostly be a novelty these days. Though when I sold camera equipment near Philly city hall they were a bit of thing with paparazzi using early DSLRs. Apparently they’re a good way to shoot heavy telephoto out of a dumpster or off the back of a motorcycle.
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Not sure how the second one was supposed to work. To look through the viewfinder you’d have to hold the “pistol” up to your face with your cocked wrist resting on your jawbone. Not very convenient.
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It’s a bit odd due to how small it is. But pistol grips setups like this were pretty default in
super 8
And that’s pretty much exactly how you held them.
The combination of the pistol grip with the sorta crouched stance, and your other hand cradling the camera near the lense was very stable and kept your hands on or near the controls.
It’s also not that different than holding a regular camera up to your face.
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At one point I used one of those pistol grips, (an old Nikon 1/4-20 mount accessory - (it even had the mechanical trigger-to-cable-release mount)) as a handle and trigger for a DiY stereoscopic digital stills rig (basically two portrait mount digital compacts mounted in “eye positions” on a common rail with the shutters synced). It was terribly balanced though - due to being a lever arm of some length as well as below the center of mass - scrapped it and wound up using a more compact grip that also fits better in a bag.
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don’t spose zenit makes the grade…
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There was an episode of Northern Exposure where two of the local residents reveal themselves to be voracious birders (never before mentioned, of course), and the climax is when these two finally capture pictures of a bird they haven’t seen in their area before. What made it notable was that one character has his camera mounted on a rifle stock:
Apparently I wasn’t the only person this made an impression on (i.e. I stole that photo from here: https://fstoppers.com/hacks/photographer-mounts-camera-gun-stock-shoot-birds-327330)
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Also don’t hold gangsta style or you will perpetrate the crime of PORTRAIT!!
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I have 500mm 5.6 lens that looks like that (but is really old and has probably far lower resolution as it was made for medium format cameras), and it’s ridiculously heavy. It’s fun to do bird photography with it though.
A friend once borrowed it and placed it on automated telescope mount and made cool looking galaxy photos using some computational method where final image is composited from about a hundred photos.
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