[Photo: Courtesy of the Saleem Muhammad Archives] Malcolm X smiling as he conducts a test-run on his camera inside his room at the Semoramis Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. The model was a Bell & Howell-70 DR, 16mm home movie camera. It was fitted with an Angenieux 25mm F. 95 lens. Although the lens didn’t have a focus collar, Bro. Malcolm had to rely on hyper focal distance to film his image properly in the mirror--setting the lens focus at a point that provided a correctly focused image of himself. While in Cairo, he noticed a particular malfunction on the unit… “By the way, I have the wrong lenses on this camera. Only the 1 inch lens matches the 1 inch view finder. The others don’t match. A TV camera man with the same camera pointed this out to me. This perhaps explains why my pictures taken in May weren’t better. If I can match them while here at minimum expense, I will.” [Unpublished Letter: Malcolm X to the O.A.A.U. Secretary, August 9, 1964]
Posted on: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 05:50:39 +0000
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