Minox have specialized in the diminutive camera market since their beginnings in 1937 and these days are owned by Leica, who bought them out in 1994. Perhaps most famed for their subminiature 9.5mm film "spy cameras", Minox also extended the range to include neat folding 35mm cameras. More recently they have introduced the DCC, in this Leica M3 clone style and also a Contax version, the mechanics are similar, just wrapped differently. Now, technically, Digital cameras fall outside our silver halide based interest, but it scrapes in due to the styling. I suspect a lot of the attraction of Minox cameras stems from the shear cute appeal of the models, the DCC continues this trend admirably. Including the slightly outsize lugs this little camera is just short of 80mm long, despite this the camera is pleasantly easy to use and with no LCD screen to power up the ready time is quite quick. Most of the controls are purely for show, the purist in me would really like the shutter speed dial to work and the delayed release lever too, as it is the delayed release is selected via the tiny menu screen on the back and the camera chooses the speed for you. The camera has a USB cable supplied to access the internally stored images and mounts without problems onto PC based systems and Mac OS9, however OSX resolutely ignored it. First incarnations of the camera were 3.2 megapixels but these were superseded by the 4.0 model as shown. Despite the heritage of the names, the camera is a Chinese product, not that it matters particularly as it's quite nicely built, however Minox make no pretensions of it being a serious digital camera, it's just a novelty camera. In this respect it very much mirrors the Micro Cameras of the 1950s. Donated by Nguyen Tuyet Mai in Sept. 2005.

Click on "this camera's gallery" button, below, to see sample images.