Week 50 - 2015
Arrow, type HIT-camera, Japan, 1950ies
The arrow that hits the mark
The Preus Museum has a large collection, but some of its objects are tiny.
The Arrow is one of many miniature cameras called Hit Cameras produced in Japan in the 1950s. They look like toys but are fully functional and have film half as wide as that in normal 35mm use. So the cost of much expensive film could be saved, making the cameras attractive in devastated postwar Japan. They were also exported in great numbers to the USA but were regarded there primarily as playthings and Christmas decorations!
The negative size is 14 x 14 mm – extremely small. On exhibition at the museum are many models of the collection's very smallest cameras.