Secam Stylophot Standard
The Stylophot Standard is a rather unique subminiature camera produced by the French camera maker, Secam. They first began producing these cameras in the mid 1950s and continued production through the 60s.
Billed as a "pen" camera, due to its vague resemblance to a hefty fountain pen and the pen clip attached to the side of the camera body, the Stylophot makes 10x10mm images on double perforated 16mm film. The silver tab with the red window, at the top of the camera, is a push-pull mechanism that is used to advance the film. When not in use, that tab is pushed down into the top of the camera, locking the shutter and interposing the red window in the viewfinder to notify you that the camera is not prepared. Pull that tab up and the camera is armed and ready. Early Stylophot cameras, like this Standard, have a fixed focus lens and two or three aperture settings. The later Standard allows the setting of either f/6.3, f/8 or f/11 with a shutter speed of approximately 1/50-1/75th.
The Stylophot makes use of its own cartridge system for containing film and, much like other cartridge-based subminiature cameras, film is transported from one cartridge to the other without ever rewinding. Thankfully, this Stylophot comes with both of the necessary film cartridges. Now all it needs is a bit of film!
One last little interesting tidbit we found about this camera is that a later model of the Stylophot was named the "Stylophot Color." The aperture selection f-stops were replaced with the words "Color" (giving the model its name) and "Noir." The "Color" setting corresponded to f/6.3, while "Noir" was f/11. These setting were based on the fact that, at the time the Stylophot Color was introduced, a common color film speed was ISO 10, while black and white film was a faster ISO 25. Talk about how times - and film technology - have changed!
za/sd
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