Last week, I happened to hear a segment on NPR where the host reviewed and rated the quality of various miniature video cams that seem to be available everywhere these days. The technology is ubiquitious, and you never know if you are being surreptitiously recorded or photographed.  Anybody can take beautiful, sharp looking pictures with a standard issue phone camera.

Back in the dark ages of the cold war, the German made Minox was the espionage agent's miniature camera of choice - especially useful for photographing documents. Invented in 1936 by Walter Zapp, it was initially viewed as a luxury item, the main selling point being that it was the size of a cigar and could easily fit into a gentleman's shirt pocket. Out of necessity, the film was small and the resulting pictures were often grainy and lost detail upon enlargement. My father had one that was loads of fun to use. You can read about it (resource for this post, too)  and see a Minox for yourself at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox