Minox A IIIs

The Minox A/IIIs camera is used by George Lazenby in the movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). While destroying Blofeld's lair atop Piz Gloria, he takes pictures of the locations of the girls that are sent out by Blofeld as biological warfare agents.

Notice that Bond is holding the camera upside down while taking pictures. That in itself could be ok, but he doesn't seem to press the shutter. Sliding the camera, as he does, is only for winding the film after you press the shutter, not taking the photo itself.

In the film we also see the image through the viewfinder. The rectangle is quite like the real thing, although it should be white, not blue. The image Bond 'sees' is green. The camera does have a green filter which can be moved in front of the lens, bit it wouldn't be visible though, since the filter only goes in font of the lens, not the viewfinder. The model used in the film must be one of the last models ever made, since the production of the A/IIIs stopped in the same year the movie came out.

Trivia: a Minox A can also be seen in the mockumentary promotional film A Child's Guide to Blowing Up a Motor Car, made by Ford Motor Company in 1965 (four years before OHMSS), about a boy and his father who visit the filming of the movie Thunderball on the Silverstone racetrack. During the intro of the short film, the Minox A camera is opened and closed and we can see it has a light brown leather case.

About Minox A
The Latvian engineer Walter Zapp wanted to create a portable camera that would fit easily into the palm of the hand and yet take high quality, spontaneous pictures. The Minox subminiature camera, in its various models, was for years the world's most widely used spy camera. The ultralight aluminum shell Minox A/IIIs was produced from 1955 untill 1969. Because of its small size (82 x 28 x 16 mm!), it was easy to conceal and operate in one hand. It could take excellent photographs of documents at close range and was a natural for clandestine photography. The "s" means that the camera has a connector for a Flash module. The older A III models don't have this connector.

Size: 82 x 28 x 16 mm
Serial numbers: 58500 to 147494

On eBay you can usually find a small selections of Minox A III cameras.

Recommended books about Minox

Minox: Marvel in Minature - by D. Scott Young
Buy on Amazon.com
Buy on Amazon.co.uk

Spycamera: The Minox Story: Second Edition
Buy on Amazon.com

Variationen in 8x11. Ein Handbuch für Sammler und Anwender by Hubert E. Heckmann
Buy on Amazon.de