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Member LoginDeVry 35mm Model A Camera
This DeVry A Camera is marked Model No.3219 Studio. It carries a famous Australian Studio lettering on its metal body, CINESOUND NEWSREEL
De Vry Cameras go back into the start of the 1930s. An advertisement in a 1938 publication of American Cinematographer describes these cameras as ‘a world favourite”.
DeVry manufactured both 35mm and 16mm, in silent and sound cameras, and quote the well known 30s Newsreel Cameraman Norman Alley saying ‘the Model A was my constant mate during the Chinese bombardments of that war’.
The Model A camera was a very used this camera in the filming of a 60minute British Ministry of Information film Desert Victory. Halliwell’s Film Guide describes this film as the greatest battle film of the war ‘it puts audiences right in the middle’….’Americans who see this film will be anxiously waiting for the next, and a U.S. equivalent’… Variety. ‘The first factual film ever made’… Daily Telegraph.
Aren’t cameras wonderful? They give we cinematographers the opportunity with our skills to capture images of moments and collect these memories of history.
What a great little camera this Model A DeVry is, metal bodied popular camera during World and weighing 11 pounds (4.5 War 11. Lt. Col. David McDonald kgs.) and spring powered. The standard lens fitted to this camera is an f2.9 JH Dallmeyer London Pentac. The camera has 100ft spool loading and the film has a single claw pulldown driven by an eccentric cam. The gate holds 4 frames of film with the claw engaging the film on the right hand side. At the left top of the gate there is a single registration pin
By removing the threaded knob on the left side of the camera the cinematographer was able to view through a prism and through the back of the film to make accurately framed images of tripod stabilised scenes. It was also used at times for adjusting the aperture to satisfy the cinematographer of the correct exposure he felt was necessary for that scene.
The main viewfinder for general scene to scene shooting was through what could be described as a waist level system located above the taking lens and ahead of a footage counter.
I wish this camera could tell us more of its history. I know that for Cinesound it recorded many important moments of Australia’s history.
from Australian Cinematographer - Issue 16