- The year is 1929, and you've just been drafted
into the Japanese Imperial Air Force.
Your first job, well you've been tasked
to shoot down planes during air combat.
But how do you train for a job like this
without shooting down your own aircraft
and fellow soldiers?
Well, that's where this comes into play.
This right here is a camera.
(upbeat music)
- This machine gun camera
was used during World War II.
Yes, this is from 1929.
But the most fascinating thing
is that the technology that's used
in this machine gun camera
is the basis for all cameras that we use today.
All right, so let's just rewind
for a quick second here.
Why am I even telling you
about this machine gun camera?
Well, a few weeks ago
I was on Facebook Marketplace
and this ad popped up.
An ad that read,
"This Japanese machine gun camera
was used in World War II."
I mean, that's a good friggin' title for an ad,
but I also thought, "That would make
a really interesting YouTube video."
So, I called the owner.
(phone ringing)
- [Man] Hello?
- Hi there, how are you?
- [Man] I'm doing well.
- Just kind of based on it's condition
would you accept 1850 for it?
- [Man] Yeah, I can't go that low.
- Do you have like a bottom line on it?
- [Man] 2250.
- If you feel comfortable with 2250,
I will take it for that.
- [Man] I can make it happen.
- Amazing, thank you so much for your time.
- Okay that's happening.
Now 2250 might sound like a lot of money,
especially for a camera that does not work,
but I do want to note something.
These are extremely rare
and are collector's items.
But most importantly, what type of person owns
and sells a World War II machine gun camera?
This guy.
(upbeat music)
- My name's Chris A. Hughes,
I'm an artifact collector
and passionate film photographer.
So I collect rare, unique oddities and cameras.
- So on the spot I asked Chris,
"Well why does a camera like this even exist?"
- It's a Japanese aerial camera.
- Now, this camera would be mounted
to the wing of the Mitsubishi A6M,
also known famously as the Zero,
which was a long range fighter aircraft.
- It would be used for practice,
so opposed to shooting bullets
you're shooting film.
- So essentially what would happen
is that after they develop the film,
the instructor would review all the photos,
which would be a lot of photos by the way,
and they would see which soldier actually
had the best aim during air to air combat.
- And it would be the same weight
as a machine gun so that when the war happened
they had a little practice already shooting a gun.
- But one of the things about this camera
is that not only was it used for training purposes,
but it was actually used in battle to confirm kills.
So I feel like we can safely assume
that the technology in this camera,
as well as this training strategy
was very effective for the Japanese military.
It was also extremely cost-efficient.
Now at the time bullets were expensive,
the world is at war
so why would you waste your own ammo
shooting at your own people for practice?
But you know what was cheap?
Film.
Enter the machine gun that shoots photos.
This is the Type 89.
- How am I supposed to walk out
of this building with this thing?
Hey, I'm non-threatening.
- This looks bad right?
All right so let's take
a quick look at this thing.
We're gonna go piece by piece
starting off with the lens.
Now the lens is actually buried inside the barrel
of the machine gun right here.
And there is a Hexar 75mm F 4.5 lens.
I don't see a focusing mechanism anywhere.
So it's safe to assume that this
was probably set to infinity focusing
since they were shooting planes at a distance.
All right so let's take a quick look
at this fancy dome thing.
I'm sure a lot of you have questions
as to what this is.
Well, this is an area
to transfer data onto the film.
Essentially how this works
is that you would lift this up,
there'd be a Seiko stopwatch
that would go right here
and there would also be an ID tag.
Now what would happen is that
essentially there's a little mirror
that's in this area up here,
the information from the stopwatch
and the ID tag would bounce off this
and bounce into another lens
that you can see right down here,
another Hexar lens, that information bounces
into a prism on top of the film
and then that data is burned
into the film as well as the photo.
Now, this is really great for the instructors
because they can look at this information,
figure out who the pilot was
and how long the trigger was gonna be open for.
All right so this is the area
that they would actually load the film.
Now, the film that they used
was 35 millimeter cine film
and the strips were actually 2.5 meters long.
So they actually had a lot of ammo.
Think about each individual frame
being like a bullet.
So they had a lot
of opportunities to shoot photos.
Now let's actually open up this compartment here
so you can see inside
Oh.
What is this?
A message from the past.
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that helps make your stories more creative
without sacrificing time, budget or resources."
Okay, obviously this is not a message from the past.
This is a message from our sponsor Storyblocks.
Without them, and without partners like them,
we would not be able to make creative ideas
like this video come to life.
As you can see, this is a whole new format
and we're relying heavily on stock footage
as well as archival footage and thanks
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So having unlimited access
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means that we can tell whatever story we want
when we want to.
So head over to storyblocks.com/chrishau
to check out their flexible subscription plans.
We love story blocks on this channel
and so will you, links are in the description.
All right so moving on to the spring motor.
Now this mechanism right here actually allows
this camera to shoot 10 frames a second,
which makes it more or less kind
of like a photo slash video camera.
Now, how this unit actually works
is similar to that of a Swiss watch.
So on some watches you actually have
to charge it by like rotating the dial
to actually build up some tension
and energy in the watch.
You have to do the same thing here with this camera.
So what you would do is you'd move this forward
and then you'd pull this back to start charging it
and then you'd (camera clicking)...
(grunting)
And eventually once it's charged
and you release the energy that's
in it by pulling the trigger,
you'd have something that sounds like this...
(machine whirring)
There's actually a little dial right here,
but this would indicate how much charge is left.
So if it's low, you'd just have to go back
and charge the camera up again
before you can start taking more photos
or shooting video with it.
Now, looking at the top of the camera here,
starting over here,
we actually have the scope and a little target.
So when you're looking through,
you can kind of find out
exactly where you're plane would be
so that you have more accuracy.
So this is essentially the World War II version
of a scope or an I E F A F E V F.
This is the EFV of World War II.
Over here is a counter
to know exactly how many photos were taken
while you were shooting photos
or shooting your planes down.
And then this part over here
is built out of wood to hold the camera,
and this camera weighs so much.
I would say this probably weighs about 40 pounds.
And that is the tour of the Konishiroku,
this is the tour of the Type 89.
Now I mentioned at the beginning of this video
that the technology using the machine gun camera
is also the basis of the technology
that's used in cameras today.
Now, we know that the machine gun camera
was developed and manufactured by a company called,
and I apologize if I get this wrong, Konishiroku.
That company later rebranded
and became more famously known
as the camera company Konica.
Now, eventually Konica merged with
another famous camera manufacturer
Minolta and became Konica Minolta.
Now in 2006, Konica Minolta
sold their camera operations
to none other than Sony,
which allowed Sony to have access
to all of their technology.
Sony would eventually use that technology
that they acquired
to create the first ever Sony Alpha camera.
So in essence, this hybrid
photo film machine gun camera
used during World War II for purposes of war
eventually got us here.
(electric guitar)
And that's friggin' fascinating.
Now, speaking about the Alpha lineup,
we're actually giving away a Sony A7sIII
to what lucky subscriber when we hit 1 million subs.
I actually also recently found out that 65%
of you that watch my videos are not subscribed.
Guys, we put a lot of effort into this video.
Press subscribe, hit that like button
and we will most definitely catch you guys
in the next one.
And also don't you just want to win a camera?
Who doesn't want to win a camera?
But you're not gonna win this camera this one's mine.