Spring mechanism camera

Spring mechanism cameras or robotic cameras are cameras that draw their drive energy for the shutter , film advance and any mirror movements from the energy stored in a spring , instead of using finger force or electrical current . The first market-ready developments for 35mm cameras were around 1940, u. a. the "Robot Photo Camera" by Otto Berning .

The best known are the “Robot” cameras from Düsseldorf, hundreds of thousands of which equip the “ star boxes ” with which traffic offenders are photographed in the event of red light and speed violations.

The robot cameras have large magazines for about 250 to 300 photos in small format 24 mm × 36 mm that can be exposed and transported one after the other using a single spring tension. Only the triggering for a star box robot happens electrically, through an induction loop and a control outside the camera.

The spring mechanism drive was also widespread in (narrow) film cameras for the amateur formats normal 8 or super 8 and 16 mm . The advantage was the independence from batteries or accumulators. A well-known model for 16 mm was the Soviet Krasnogorsk-3 , which could expose 4.5 m of film (about 25 seconds at 24 frames / s ) with a spring winding .

Web links

• Robot Camera Historie - private page of the four collectors R. Beltermann, H. Grahner, C. Bellon and M. Ensel around 2002, updated 2017, accessed March 31, 2018
• Robot camera with mechanical motor lift, around 1950