If you buy these with the intent to use them, many of these Russian miniatures take Minox film, the tiny stuff of James Bond films (it’s still available), but others will require a deft hand in the dark room.
“Some lots include a splitter,” says Goldsmith. “If you can be bothered to do all the fussing around in a dark room, this will take standard 35mm film and split it into strips you can wind into a camera’s mini cassettes.”
Goldsmith calls his favorite lot in the sale “completely ridiculous”—a spy camera disguised as a camera. He said that when they picked up the collection, the company van ended up full to the brim with cameras. “We must’ve had 40 or 50 huge boxes, but [Lot 411] was the only one that I could not for the life of me work out how to operate.”
After much tinkering, it took a call to the manufacturer, Moscow-based KMZ (Krasnogorski Mekhanicheskii Zavod, known colloquially as Zenit because of its Cyrillic name, ЗЕНИТ), to figure it out. Goldsmith learned that, hidden inside this run-of-the-mill Zenit E model camera, is a secret KMZ F-21 Ajax-12 spy camera measuring about 3 inches by 2 inches by 1 inch. A small flap on the side of the Zenit opens to expose the F-21’s barely visible lens. You can be facing forward, carrying it on your shoulder or holding it in your hand, yet snapping shots 90 degrees to your left.
“If you’re somewhere where you’re not allowed to take photographs, a security guard would say, ‘Oh, he can’t take a photo, his camera’s closed in its case around his neck.’”
The secret camera is driven like a clock, with wound springs and minute mechanical gears. Goldsmith explains that when you press a tiny button on the bottom of the camera, “a little piece of string opens that flap on the side. The shutter fires, the flap closes, and the film winds again, ready for the next picture.”
“Certainly a gadget worthy of Q,” he adds, referring to MI6’s famous quartermaster who provided 007 with his spycraft tech.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.