Merlin Camera

My Merlin camera.

This week's posting is about a relatively uncommon camera with an odd and unusual look made by a tiny company in the UK. The camera is the Merlin, produced by United Optical Instruments in Southend-on-the-Sea, England. 

 I had seen the Merlin camera in books and online when looking at subminiature cameras. Still, it wasn't until my wife. I was on a trip to London a couple of years ago when I came across this odd bird at the Camera’s London stall on Portobello Road on a day that my wife and I were scheduled to go home. 

 Our flight wasn't until later in the afternoon, and I wanted to look for cameras before leaving, so I went there early in the morning to make it back in time to go to the airport. That's where I spotted the Merlin camera and a few other cameras I brought back to the States with me.

 What caught my eye about the Merlin camera is the very odd shape of the camera. It has a wide part of the body, then narrows down, but the lens area flares out again, and the winding knob is on the bottom of the camera. You need to display the camera on the side unless you rest the camera on something due to the winding knob on the bottom of the camera. It just doesn't sit evenly on a flat surface.

The Company:

United Optical Instruments is only known to have made two different cameras, and neither was very popular. One of the cameras they manufactured was the Jupiter camera, a simple plastic camera with an Art Deco faceplate that took 127-size film. The only controls on the camera were two shutter speeds, the winding mechanism, and the shutter release. The other camera they manufactured was the subminiature Merlin camera. 

ERAC Camera

 I can find little information about United Optical Instruments, which is located in a resort town on the Thames Estuary in Essex, southeast England, about 68 kilometers from London. However, I did find that the company was associated with the Erac Selling Company.

 The Erac Selling Co. manufactured and patented two slightly different, oddly shaped cameras that resembled a pistol made from thermoplastic material. One of the items was the Erac Automatic Pistol Camera, and the other was the Erac Mercury 1. These pistol-shaped cameras housed a Merlin camera without the viewfinder inside the pistol's body. When you pulled the pistol trigger, the camera took the photo. 

 According to the information I found online, the Erac is described and illustrated in a patent issued to Harry Steward of Southend-on-Sea in 1931. The early version uses a different type of film advance, and the Merlin doesn't seem to be in this version.

 Harry Steward and Harry Covill were issued an improved patent in 1937. The second camera's patent described it as a pistol-shaped device. The patent drawings show it to resemble a Merlin camera inside, but there is no mention of Erac.

 Since the Merlin camera is inside the Erac Pistol camera, they patented a camera without the Merlin inside. Still, they found it too difficult to make it work. A few years later, they decided to put the Merlin camera inside the camera without the viewfinder.

The Camera:

As you can see in the photos, the camera is very small. It's only  2" wide, 2" deep, and 2" tall with finder up and 1.5" when it's down, and it only weighs 3.9 oz. The camera is made from cast metal and painted with a crackle finish, as the exterior has a rough surface. I can see areas where it's either chipped off or some flaked off. My Merlin camera is black, but they also have blue, green, and red cameras.

 The Merlin took a special film of only 20mm rolls with a negative size of 18x18mm. It came on paperback rolls similar to the small "hit" style cameras, and to load the camera, the top of the camera, which is attached to the back, slides off, exposing the film chamber. Put in the roll of film, bring it over to the take-up spool, slide the top back on, and advance the roll to the first frame. The winding knob is on the bottom of the camera, as I mentioned earlier.

 Another slight issue is that the top of the body doesn't lock, so if the camera falls, the top can slide off, exposing the film. Unfortunately, my camera doesn't have any original fill spools, only the blank areas where the film goes.

The bottom of the Merlin camera.

 There is only one shutter speed, and the shutter release is on the bottom of the camera along with the film advance knob. The only item on the top of the camera is the fold-down viewfinder. The lens has no focus as it's a meniscus-style lens.

Conclusion:

Since I didn't have the film for this camera, I couldn't take it out for a walk through the neighborhood to take photos and see how it did. That's OK. I can use other cameras to do that.

 I really like having this small camera in my collection, and now I want to find a Jupiter or Erac camera to add to it.

 Thank you for taking a few minutes from your day to read about this wonderful camera made almost 100 years ago by a very small company in England. It has a nice place in my collection and hopefully inspires you to find one for it, too.

 I'd love to hear from you if you have questions, comments, or concerns about this or any of the cameras I've written about.

 Until next week, please be safe.

Expo Watch Camera

This week's camera blog is about another unusual camera given to me many years ago by one of my sisters' in-laws who passed away. The family members knew I enjoyed cameras, so they gifted the camera to me and asked me to take care of it for the man who passed. 

My Expo Watch Camera

 When I first received the Expo Watch camera, I was utterly surprised and deeply touched by the generosity. Opening the small box to reveal the fantastic camera in good working condition was a moment I'll never forget. It was a revelation that the person who passed knew about my love for cameras. It could have been my wonderful sister who had shared my passion with the family.

 Needless to say, it's in a prominent place in my collection and something I look at almost daily and think about the generosity of the person who gifted it to me.

 To add to the story of this blog and the Expo Watch camera, about three to four years ago, I purchased a "lot" of camera items. Among the other items I bought were accessories from what I thought were for the Expo Watch camera. However, after researching the cameras, I found that they are actually for the slightly later British version made by Houghton, the Ticka camera. They fit and work on both the Expo and Ticka cameras.

The Company:

Patent for Expo Camera

The camera was designed and invented by a Swedish designer, Magnus Niéll, who lived in Sweden and New York. The patent for the Expo Watch camera was approved on September 6, 1904. This camera was a significant innovation in the history of photography, as it was one of the first to feature a daylight-loadable film cassette with 25, 16mm x 22mm, or 5/8" x 7/8" exposures in each cassette.

 The Expo Camera Company, located at 256 West 23rd Street, New York, manufactured the Expo Watch camera. It also produced the Expo Police Camera and developed and enlarged accessories for both cameras. The company offered film processing and printing to its customers. If interested, here's a copy of the full Expo Camera Pricelist and Manual.

In an ad I found published in 1917, the purchase price for the Expo Watch Camera was $2.50. According to the price list above, the processing fee was 10 cents to develop per roll of film. Contact prints (5/8"x7/8") were .10 cents per dozen, .07 cents per 2x3 enlargement, and .10 cents per 3x4 enlargement. I also enjoyed their statement that "Cash should accompany all orders for development, printing, and enlarging."

Ad for Expo Watch Camera

 The Expo Watch camera started in 1905, was taken over in the late 1920s by the dealer G Gennart, who produced several different names on the camera. In 1935, there were red, blue, and black enamel cameras, which were extremely rare. 

 In 1905, or shortly after, Magnus Niéll offered the camera's design to the British camera manufacturer Houghton, who produced the same camera under the Ticka name. The Ticka camera was available in the United Kingdom from 1905 to 1914. Some of the later Ticka models had a replica watch face on the front, with the hand indicating the angle of view the photographer would have when taking a photo.

Magnus Niéll designed other cameras for Houghton, such as the Ensign Midget, Ensignette, and the unusual design folding plate Lopa camera made by Kindermann. 

My Camera:

My Expo Watch camera measures 2 3/8" in diameter across the body of the camera, and if you measure from the front of the lens, including the fob ring, to the rear of the camera is 3" long and 1" deep, including the winding knob and the camera weighs 2.7oz. The camera is made from Nickel and has a highly polished chrome top and bottom.

The camera was designed like a pocket watch so it would be inconspicuous for the people the photographer wanted to photograph. This design feature allowed the user of the Expo Watch camera to easily keep it in one of his vest pockets, making it ideal for candid photography. The photographer could remove the camera from his pocket, take the cap off the lens, point it at his subject, and take a photo.

Beneath the fob ring is a lens cap resembling a pocket camera's winding stem. Under the lens cap is a fixed focus, 25mm lens. The camera has two settings for shutter speeds. There is "I" for an instant, approximately 1/125 speed, and the other setting is "T" for a time exposure. The shutter settings are done on the side of the camera with a lever you pull down. The shutter release butting is a small pin on the underside of the camera set at the one o'clock position. Once the camera's shutter is cocked, you press that pin in, and the shutter releases, making the photo.

The shutter release button on Expo Watch Camera

The shutter is not self-capping, meaning that when you cock the shutter, you're exposing the film to light, so it was recommended to keep the lens cap on until you're ready to make the exposure. 

Shutter cocking Mechanist and settings for Shutter speed.

 The lens cap served as the shutter time if you were doing time exposures. You set it to "T," click the shutter, take the lens cap off for exposure, put the lens cap on to end exposure, and the cock the shutter again for the following exposure. I can almost 100% guarantee that 99.9% of these images are blurry due to the person's hand holding the camera for any period of time, along with the movement of taking off and putting on the lens cap, and the negative being so small.

On the underside of the camera, or the opposite side of the removable plate with the beautifully etched "EXPO," is the winding lever you turn to advance the film. Just to the left of the winding knob is a small window that tells the photographer what frame number they're on. Above the winding knob is another logo for the camera company, which includes EXPO in the center of an oval. Around the oval is Pat throughout the world. On top and under is The Expo Camera New York USA

On the bottom of the camera is a lever you can turn to help pop off the etched plate, which comes off to load the film. I'm too afraid to turn this lever too hard, as I don't want the lever to snap off, so to remove the etched plate, I use my fingernails and pull the plate off to expose where the film goes. Once the plate is removed, the film cassette fits into the bottom portion of the camera.

The Expo Camera did have two different viewfinders available that would fit around the collar of the lens, under the winding stem. A simple model A ground glass viewfinder sold for .50 cents, and a model B brilliant finder sold for .75 cents.

 I also have an item made for the Ticka Camera in the group. There were a few accessories, such as the time exposure lens cap. This item fits over the lens and is held into place by a tension screw. Once in place, you can pull the lever up/down depending on how it is mounted to open the lens, exposing the film to light. Using the time exposure cap is considerably easier than taking the lens cap on and off for time exposures. Another item I have is a separate finder lens which is a larger glass item with a convex lens and attaches onto the camera like the other viewfinders. It has the exact attaching mechanism that fits around the lens collar. From what I'm seeing online, both the time exposure lens cap and the larger window finder were made for the TICKA camera.

Conclusion:

The Expo Watch Camera is a fun and exciting camera to have in my collection. I cherish the way I received it. The more I researched the camera and its different variations, the more I'd like to expand my collection to include the Ticka model with the watch face on it or even some of the colored models I'm always drawn to.

 

Reference:

Pacific Rim:  https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/01266/01266.pdf

Historic Cameras:  http://www.historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=919&

Submini.com:  http://www.submin.com/large/collection/expo/introduction.htm

Vintage photo:  http://www.vintagephoto.tv/expowatch.shtml