KGB Movie Camera Disguise for F-21 "Electroni

Hello Bill,

my best congratulations on your fantastic acquisition! I can imagine, that your KGB related camera collection now becoming #1 worldwide for sure! And only modern "Energizer" batteries do not look good in your unique set indeed ...

Thanks for showing this to us!

Best Regards,
Aidas

Bill,
This is a great device indeed. What amazes me is that they were doing this spying in the 1980's. I felt that spying is more from the 1960's, Cold War at its peak and such, but this is 1982...
I bet they still have some hardcore KGB guys who shoot with F-21:-)
Yuri

Hello Aidas and Yuri,
Thanks for looking at the catalog entry. Of course I am very happy to have this camera and they are hard to find. Probably not too many made.

Aidas, the batteries were just to see that the noise-making motor worked, which it does. I would love to find some old Soviet batteries to photograph it with!

Yuri, I think that a lot of the F-21 cameras, the disguises for them, and other devices used by KGB were more for internal use in the USSR, possibly to watch foreign journalists, visitors and also Soviet dissidents and other perceived or suspected "enimies" of the State or Party.

Quite a few KGB disguises and F-21 cameras seem to be from the 1970s, 80s, and even early 1990s, judging from the serial numbers and some of the manuals and papers that sometimes are available with the cameras, and also from the styles of some of the disguise handbags.
Probably KGB agents working in the west may have often used western style disguises to go unnoticed and these things may have been destroyed or abandoned when their use was finished and the agent called home.

I have heard that the Russian police still use some of these cameras and devices, and I think probably they are used in Belarus too.

So, thanks for looking and I will add more surveillance stuff from time to time (I have a few more things).

Regards, Bill

I have two 'spy" outfits, which I am now inspired to photograph and post.
One is a simple purse with a F-21 inside, probably a KGB issue.
Another is much cruder - a portfolio with a Zorki-6 inside. To make it flatter, they used a Orion-15 optical block. I suspect the latter is not a KGB item, but a police department piece.

I never had a place to post these cameras, but this forum is a perfect place.

Yuri

Sounds good Yuri ... I would love to see them whenever you do have time to do it! A wide angle like Orion-15 would be very good for photographic surveillance of a building or physical area, as well as to make it flatter.

Regards, Bill

Yuri,

that will be great, thank you! Just add those as catalog entries please, not into forums! And everyone else, if you have an interesting piece that you post to the forum, would you please also add those to catalog because they get lost in forums.

Thanks!
Vlad.

Bill, in the picture of this Quartz, the one before the last, you got camera standing on some cool stand... what is it and where can I get one like that? Seems like a cool one to display movie cameras with handles attached.

Thanks,
Vlad.

Hi Vlad,
It is a stand for dolls. A doll collector uses them to hold up dolls for display. I had the Quarz balanced on it. I'm not sure if it would be good for permanent display. You can probably buy them online with a search on Ebay for "doll stand", or in an antiques collective that has a booth with lots of dolls in it may also sell them.

Regards, Bill

Thanks Bill, well if it's not sturdy then it doesn't make much sense to use these as you said for permanent display, I was just curious what it was..

Vlad

quote:

---

Originally posted by nightphoto


Sounds good Yuri ... I would love to see them whenever you do have time to do it! A wide angle like Orion-15 would be very good for photographic surveillance of a building or physical area, as well as to make it flatter.

Regards, Bill

---

I added two Wiki entries - for the F-21 purse disguise and for the button set (similar to Bill's)

Wow! The words "very cool" don't even do it justice! Thanks Yuri for posting these! And congratulations on your first wiki entries!

Vlad

This movie camera disguise had made it to this blog:

http://onsuper8.blogspot.com/2008/04/spies-like-us.html

Very cool!

Vlad