Tessina 35 / Tessina L
Where to even begin with the Tessina 35 / Tessina L camera?
This precision-made, Swiss camera is a subminiature TLR camera that uses standard 35mm film to produce 14x21mm frames, all the while being small enough to literally fit inside a packet of cigarettes (with room to spare to hide it under snipped of ends of cigarettes so that casual observers don't realize the packet contains a camera). Get all that? Perhaps we should begin again from the top.
So the Tessina is an extremely high precision, clockwork camera produced in Switzerland by W.Siegrist & CIE. AG. It was the combined design work of Arthur Siegrist and Paul Nagel (of Kodak Retina fame). The camera was hand-assembled from over 100 small parts and housed a spring-tensioned motor that automatically advanced film after the motor was wound. Making the Tessina even more unique is that it is a TLR design. The camera features two lenses, each positioned in front of a mirror. One lens projects an image onto a small viewfinder for composition, while the other lens projects exposure onto the film plane which is set at a 90 degree angle to the lens. But wait, there's more! The camera is considered part of the subminiature category of cameras, due to its small size. The Tessina is small enough to fit inside a pack of cigarettes, as mentioned above, worn on the wrist like a watch, or hidden inside a purse or pocket for photography-on-the-sly. Despite its small size, the Tessina uses standard 35mm film (but not in standard 135 canisters) to produce a 14x21mm frame. This might give the Tessina the top award if ever there was a contest for greatest negative to camera size ratio contest.
Also interestingly enough, the Tessina had a surprisingly long production run. It was first introduced in 1957 but was still being made as late as 1996.
You might wonder just how you could be any more impressed by this camera. Well, we should also mention that it offered a full array of camera controls. For example, it had a manual shutter with speeds between 1/2 to 1/500 of a second. Similarly aperture could be continuously varied from f2.8 to f22. There was even manual focusing!
There is not much difference between the Tessina L and the Tessina 35, the most notable being the Tessina L has a small slot for attaching an accessory light meter and having it couple with the aperture dial.
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