Any guesses?

Edited by Kat_P on 06/14/2011 07:31:42 MDT.

it's a 1937 Compass. Made in Switzerland by Jaeger LeCoultre.
It has a few interesting bits inside...


Franco

Edited by Franco on 06/14/2011 18:44:52 MDT.

Franco, that is my brother holding it. He says it's 1938...

Edited by Kat_P on 06/14/2011 19:11:02 MDT.

You can buy one on eBay right now for only $5,000!

Katharina
see if your brother can beat this one..

sorry about the poor quality. it is a copy of a print. I offloaded that one sometime ago.
Franco
BTW, the other one is a Ducati Sogno

Edited by Franco on 06/14/2011 19:47:17 MDT.

He's not here to say....He has a collection of cameras and actually uses them and does the developing. I'll pm you a link where you can see.


What is yours?

Edited by Kat_P on 06/14/2011 19:52:50 MDT.

I'll tell you tomorrow.
I want to see if anyone can guess .
But here is a clue : it's unique.
Franco
BTW, it is a real camera, not "photoshopped"

I'll take a stab.

It's definitely an old Leica rangefinder of some sort, has that classic Leica rangefinder shape. Judging by the height, it used a smaller roll film format (35mm?). Whatever it may be, it's pre- 1920's and 1930's... yours has a brass lens bezel, not stainless.

Ah! I couldn't see it through the lens on your glasses, the photo is blurry, but you're looking through a non-glass element viewfinder!

Agreed--I think it's an Ur-Leica, which would make it fabulously rare and costly. As to why they let Aussie rabble handle one, that's anybody's guess. ;-)

http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ur-Leica

Cheers,

Rick

p.s. That Compass is the craziest thing I've seen in ages. I can't imagine actually using one of the blades, what with a camera attached.

Edited by halfturbo on 06/15/2011 16:10:43 MDT.

it's a 1937 Compass. Made in Switzerland by Jaeger LeCoultre.
It has a few interesting bits inside...

A Swiss Army camera :-)

Looks like quite a piece of engineering work!

The compass was made with less than 100 pieces...

Katharina
I have handled several Ducati (cameras...) over the years but never had that I can remember one in very good condition. The one your brother is holding looks mint. So a very nice collectors piece.

"my camera"
Well I wish..
Rick was correct . It is this one :




THE Ur Leica, one of three made by the "father" of the 35mm format , Oscar Barnak.
All three were slightly different , therefore they are truly unique.
They were all made around 1913 and from them a production model was made in 1923
The first production run was of 25 cameras and one of them was recently sold for about 1.9 million dollars.
Of the 3 UR Leica (Ur means original in German) one disappeared and there is no record of it (however I was told by the Leica Museum curator how it differed from the one they have) the other was a few years ago in the hands of a Japanese collector (according to Leica) and the one in my hands is stored in a bank vault in ... (I'll tell you another time)

http://www.fdtimes.com/news/leica/first-leica/

and some more info here :
http://www.overgaard.dk/leica_history.html
So for a few minutes I had in my hands possibly the most expensive camera in the world as well as a piece of history.
(BTW, I fired the shutter a few times changing shutter speed too, some of my colleagues panicked and the Leica guys smiled nervously. But it does still work...)
By that stage I had in my pocket a pre production sample of a new compact camera that a Panasonic division had just made.
I spotted that one going around the fabric the day before and asked if I could test it. The product manager from the Pana factory (called then Western Electric) was there personally to talk business with the Leica people so I got a chance to talk to him too.
(I was a guest at Leica for 1 week)
Franco