Debrie Parvo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Debrie Parvo was a 35mm motion picture camera developed in France by Joseph Jules Debrie, in 1908. The name of the camera means "compact" in French, and it was indeed relatively compact for its time. The camera was hand cranked, as were its predecessors. To aid the camera operator in cranking at the correct speed, the camera had a built in tachometer.
The Parvo held up to 120 meters of film (approximately 400 ft) inside without the need for an external film magazine, yielding almost 6 minutes of film when cranked at the standard 16 frames per second silent film rate. It allowed the camera operator to focus the camera lens but - as all other cine cameras of its era - had a side optical viewfinder to be used during actual filming.
The Parvo was immensely popular in Europe during the silent film era, straight through the 1920's. Directors who particularly liked the camera were Abel Gance, Leni Riefenstahl, and Sergei Eisenstein. The latter's cinematographer, Eduard Tisse, would use the camera into the sound era, i.e. filming the duelling sequence in Alexander Nevsky.
