I've heard of pistol cameras used by aerial photographers in WWs I & II, but have not seen these before.
These were made by Doryu and Mamiya for Japanese police, though I'm sure even they thought it'd be a bad idea pointing these at people.
The Mamiya is a 35mm half frame and the Doryu 16mm.
The Doryu also uses a magnesium cartridge for the flash. That wouldn't have confused anyone.
They're rare and sometimes show up auctioned at $10k.
Yep. The only rational response I have is "why"
I mean, I could see those as a training device in a controlled environment, to prove you could have made the shot.
But to just carry those in the field and point them at random people? No thanks.
Using a rifle stock for a long lense, definitely. I do a similar thing with a monopod. A pistol... no.
In reply to aircooled :
That.... That actually makes a lot of sense and I'm surprised I don't see it more often
All of those things would definitely get you shot by trigger happy police and/or civilians.
Mr_Asa said:Yep. The only rational response I have is "why"
According to the article, the idea was so that you could win the camera while maintaining better situational awareness than if you had to look through a viewfinder. The manufacturer never considered the problem of pulling out a camera with that shape at the sort of times that need maximum situational awareness.
aircooled said:Using a rifle stock for a long lense, definitely. I do a similar thing with a monopod. A pistol... no.
I remember seeing some WW2 documentary where, IIRC, a Japanese woman jumped off a cliff with her child because she saw an American war journalist approaching with an enormous video camera on a crude wooden rifle-stock-style mount something like this. The camera was rolling and captured her jumping off the cliff.
Went looking to see if I could find anything about it and ran across an arguably more menacing camera, but at least one that was less dangerous since it was meant to be mounted in a fighter plane:
It was pure luck that this guy didn't cause a major incident open-carrying this thing out of a Toronto apartment building! 
Surely you've heard the term "photo shoot?"
In reply to GameboyRMH :
That was interesting. I can see it being used for confirmed kills, but for training aren't pilots normally aiming indirectly at the target because of movement and wind?
The watch and lens system to timestamp the photo is clever. I tried to google examples but haven't found one yet.
Aerial pistol cameras I've read about were like this and used for recon.
_1.jpg)
In reply to j_tso :
I assume they'd use the 10fps video mode for training so an instructor could see how the planes were moving and judge whether the pilot was aiming correctly.
Some very likely corrections to the video above (I honestly don't have any direct knowledge of these training cameras):
That absolutely is not a camera they would mount in the wing of a fighter. It's pretty clearly a trainer for gunners using flexibly mounted guns such as bombers defensive gunners and anti-aircraft (ground based) gunners.
A wing mounted gun camera (which I don't think the Japanese ever used) looks more like this:
The US of course used wing mounted gun cameras pretty extensively to help confirm kills. For defensive gunnery training the US used more direct (this one is actually British, but the US techniques were similar)
Defensive gunnery can be rather tricky since you not only have to compensate (lead target) based on its relative motion, but you need to compensate for what is effectively huge crosswinds as the result of the firing planes airspeed, which varies greatly depending on the angle you are firing. E.g. full effect if shooting perpendicular to direction of travel, and zero effect if shooting directly in or away from direction of travel. And, firing toward or away from the direction of travel will effect the drop of the bullets. So, yes, training is critical!
This.
Oddly, one of those Mamiya Pistols just showed up in tokyocamerastyle, an IG account that I follow.
You'll need to log in to post.
