Oliver G Pike

Newman Sinclair Camera

Oliver Pike's first ciné camera was much less sophisticated than the Newman Sinclair model that he used later. The early models made a lot of noise, they were very heavy, the reels of film were short, and you had to wind the film manually at the correct speed.

He first experimented with cinematography in his back garden in the winter of 1904. In the Spring of 1907 he acquired a better camera and swiftly produced his first films.

While working for Pathé Freres his wildlife films were sometimes coloured by hand in France. He said that the colours were more realistic than any mechanical colour film process he had seen at the time.

The Newman Sinclair Autokine camera of the 1930s was made of aluminium so was much lighter than earlier models. You had to wind it up, but you could set it so that the spring mechanism would run the film at a selected speed. You could fit extra lenses for long shots and Oliver Pike even used it for micro-cinematography with a microscope.