The Luftwaffen model of the Robot camera was produced between 1940-45 for the German airforce, most likely as a gun camera to record images of airstrikes and dogfights. It uses the same clockwork mechanism as previous Robot cameras for tensioning film advance. They can be found with either single or double spring motors. The rotary shutter speeds are set by a dial on the face of the camera with speeds ranging from 1 second to 1/500. Aperture is manually set on the lens which is interchangeable and uses the proprietary Robot thread mount.
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Robot II Luftwaffe Eigentum
It's not often we see a Robot camera, let alone a whole box of them! Our sci-fi fantasies came true on day in 2017, when we received a massive consignment from Tony Rosenwald's estate. We spent a great deal of time testing and researching these cameras, especially the Robots. One of our favorite resource materials is easily our 2005-2006 edition of McKeown's Cameras. This book is the camera bible. We like to joke that if a camera isn't in here, it doesn't exist. Sure enough, it had every version of Robot camera that came in on this consignment, including this Luftwaffe model.