Hidden cameras are so small these days that you just never know where they'll
show up next. Well I'll tell you where, in clothing, that's where.
Neckties, ball caps, even shirt buttons can conceal a hidden spy cam. I
thought this stuff was only in James Bond movies, but as it turns out, covert
hidden spy cameras have been used in the real world for quite some time now.
A brief history of miniature cameras
Once upon a time, a long time ago, men generally carried a watch in their
pocket and not on a wristband. They were of course known as pocket watches and
almost all successful business people had one. Spies, undercover agents and
private-eyes needed a way to conceal a camera on their body for covert
operations, and what better idea than one built into what looked like an
ordinary pocket watch.
The Tica Expo Watch Camera is possibly the most famous covert watch
camera every made, at least among historians and collectors. Thousands of them
were sold all over the world in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Expo
Camera Company of New York made the Tica Expo, which had a removable viewfinder
that would attach to the top of the pocket watch unit.
In the late 1940's the Steineck ABC Wrist Watch Camera came along and
was sold in the USA for about 10 years or so until the late 1950s. Although this
was not a functioning watch, it was a very popular camera for its time,
primarily with private investigators.
In the1940's, 1950's, and1960's, the Minox Spy Camera was known
throughout the world as the miniature spy camera to own. Almost all intelligence
agents and spies had one because the camera was very good at taking close up
document photographs. The camera was so small and worked so well, that in many
parts of the world, including the United States; its sales were restricted to
government agencies and military intelligence personnel. In the late 1960's they
became publicly available and if you were a private-eye with one of these
cameras, you were the envy of all the other private-eyes because you had the
very latest high tech spy camera on the market.
During the mid to late 1950's a huge assortment of miniature cameras hit the
market. Some of these cameras were very good but many of them were very cheap
and didn't work very well. Most of the small camera makers used special film
that you would have to purchase directly from the camera maker. They also used
their own processing techniques for the film, and did it in such a way that you
could only have the film developed by the processing lab of the original camera
maker.
In the late 1950's, Polaroid started a new camera revolution with film that
developed itself in seconds and the finished photo could be pulled right out of
the camera and viewed instantly. The instant camera, was invented by Edwin Land,
and was known as the Polaroid Automatic Land Camera. When the Polaroid
Automatic Land Cameras came out, they were the talk of the town and all the rage
for professionals, including police detectives, insurance adjusters, and private
investigators simply because there was no film developing. If you had a Polaroid
Camera, you could take a photo and just a few minutes later, hand it to your
client or use it as evidence. The camera world was changing.
Fast forward a couple of decades and we enter the digital revolution. Digital
photography has many advantages over film photography.
1) There is no film processing involved, which makes it cheaper and
faster to get your pictures.
2) Resolution is much better than average film photography. Although
it didn't start out that way, today it's quite common for digital cameras to
have between 5 and 12 mega pixels which makes for a very detailed picture
3) With photo editing software, it's really very easy to adjust the
brightness, contrast, color, and size, allowing you to use your computer a
do-it-yourself digital darkroom.
4) Size. This is the big one! (Or more appropriately, the small one)
Digital cameras can be created so small, that they can be covertly disguised as
almost anything, including the clothes that you're wearing.
There are many still picture cameras on the market today, disguised as pens,
lighters, zoom lens binoculars, and most of the cell phones nowadays have a
covert camera built right in. The resolution on most of these cameras is still
pretty low, however they can effectively be used for taking up-close snapshots
with significant clarity.
Many covert video surveillance cameras are built with CCD (Charge Coupled
Device) board cameras, which provide amazing resolution and picture quality.
Miniature CMOS cameras are also becoming more popular as the picture quality
improves with newer technology. They can be wired right into a portable DVR
(Digital Video Recorder) that small enough to fit in a fanny pack or in a coat
pocket. Or if you prefer, covert cameras can wirelessly transmit the video
signal to a remote receiver up to a mile away. Although the further away you
are from the receiver, the more likely you are to run into video interference
from outside sources.
In conclusion, covert spy cameras have been around for a long time, and have
come a long way since the original pocket watch camera. They are smaller and
more affordable than ever before, which means they can be purchased and used by
professionals as well as the average citizen looking to carry out their own
covert operations.
