Although 8mm cameras were aimed at the amateur market, they were sometimes used by ethnographers for simple documentation purposes. Among those to do so were Dina and Claude Lévi-Strauss who took a camera that Claude describes as an “oval-shaped miniature 8mm camera” on their 1935-36 expedition to the interior of Brazil.
This description would fit the Bell & Howell Filmo 127-A, the so-called ‘Straight Eight’ (see below), which was launched in 1935, i.e. the same year in which the Lévi-Strausses set out on their journey.
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