Robot (camera)
Originally created in 1934 as a brand of Otto Berning, it became part of the Jenoptik group of optical companies in 1999, and specializes in traffic surveillance today.
The 24×24mm square frame provided many advantages, including allowing over 50 exposures per standard roll of Leica film instead of 36.
The first production cameras had a stainless steel body, a spring drive that could shoot 4 frames per second, and a rotary shutter with speeds from 1 to 1/500th second.
The camera does not have a rangefinder, as it was designed for use mostly with short focal length lenses (e.g. 40 mm) with great depth of field.
A very sharp zone-focusing f/2.8, 3.25 cm Zeiss Tessar lens added 125mm (1/2 inch) to the camera depth.
It was about the size of the much later Olympus Stylus although it weighed about 567 grams (20 ounces), approximately the weight of a modern SLR.
When the camera back was shut, the compression opened the passage and the film could travel freely from one cassette to another.
Shutter speed was determined by spring tension and mechanical delay since the exposure sector was fixed.
The small optical viewfinder could be rotated 90 degrees to permit pictures to be taken in one direction while the photographer was facing in another.
When the viewfinder was rotated, the scene was viewed through a deep purple filter similar to those used by cinematographers to judge the black and white contrast of an image.
In 1938 Berning introduced the Robot II, a slightly larger camera with some significant improvements but still using the basic mechanism.
Civilian versions of the Robot were discontinued at the outset of the Second World War, but it was used as a bomb damage assessment camera by the Luftwaffe, mounted in the tail of Ju 87 (Stuka) dive bombers.
In the stress of the automatic pull out, when it was not uncommon for the pilot to black out from the g levels, switching on the bomb damage assessment camera was frequently forgotten.
Robot then introduced the "Junior", an economy model with the quality and almost all the features of the "Star" but without the angle finder or the rewind mechanism.
Robot Royal III has a main spring, when tightened, the camera can take 4 to 5 pictures in succession.
It became the centerpiece of the company's portable document capture, traffic control and security solutions, and continues to be the standard Robot camera for instrumentation applications.
The company was well aware of this market and produced a variety of accessories which made the camera even more suitable for covert photography.
The square frame was big enough, with modern films, for A4 (210 x 297 mm, or 8.25"× 11.75") or greater enlargements, and 50 pictures could be taken on a standard 36-exposure roll.
