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Manitoba Man Invents Special movie camera

Looking just a little like one of Rube Goldberg's specialities but actually a very efficient photographic machine, Big Louis, a specially adapted movie camera invented by Francis J. S. Holmes of Fort Garry, was viewed Tuesday afternoon for the first time by photographic experts and technicians.

The invention, to be used for photographing wild life in their natural setting in color, may also be the answer to the problem faced by medical and clinical photographers — how to photograph operations with close-up detail and stay out of the way of the surgeon at the same time.

Commenting on his invention, Mr. Holmes, who has 20 years experience in the production of commercial motion pictures, said that he needed a special camera that would make bird and wild life photography easy and sure. "I didn't see that there, was any machine manufactured to answer my needs so I went ahead and designed one myself."

Extreme Close-Ups

The object of the special attachments, which are built around a standard 16 mm movie camera , is to make extreme telescopic closeups of wild life. Saving of film, many feet of which are usually wasted with ordinary telescopic lenses, is one of the main features. This is made possible by the special 18 inch brass tube view-finder in which the exact image is viewed the same size it will appear on the film. Magnification is so great that a playing card held 12 feet from the lense will entirely fill the view-finder. Four lenses which are contained in the tubular finder were specially ground in Winnipeg.

The 63 pound camera, complete with specially designed tripod, has two nine-inch focal length Bausch and Lomb lenses. One is for viewing, the other takes the actual picture. A pistol grip arrangement with a trigger release for the camera mechanism makes aiming and operating sure and lightning fast.

Big Louis was about six weeks on the drawing board, Mr. Holmes recalled, and two months in the building.

Metal parts, including two ball and sockets and a special levelling device to be used on uneven ground, are made of duraluminum.

From the front page of the May 29, 1946 Winnipeg Free Press.

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