Vegas "Spy Camera" Photo Walk and Bonus Info / Videos

Photos from a photo walk at Downtown Summerlin, Las Vegas during the Christmas season 2025. I took these photos with a “spy camera” :)

The Minolta 16 MG is a subminiature viewfinder camera introduced by Minolta in 1966, part of a series produced between 1955 and 1974 before the rise of the 110 film format. It uses 16mm film with a frame size of 10×14 mm. That’s pretty small!

I did use a yellow filter with the camera for these photos. It came with the kit for the camera.

It has a film holder cassette that you need to reload with 16mm film. My used camera had an empty cassette inside and I got film from the Film Photography Project.

The photos were developed by me with Cinestill Df96 Monobath.

Is the Minolta 16 really a spy camera? Well maybe. You might have seen in a movie someone taking close up photos of documents. Well that is a movie thing. These little cameras don’t focus that close and they would need a flash in a dimly office like the movies show. The closest I can focus with this camera is about 4 feet.

It could be used to take photos of things. Buildings, cars, parked planes, people, and much more that a spy might want to see. The camera is very small so it can be snuck in to lots of places. It also can use a flash. So maybe…

However I don’t think a spy would really use it. It is more like an easy to carry and use small camera that can produce very usable film photos.

During the Cold War cameras were attached to pigeons but not this one! The tiny Minox was famous for being a spy camera but there are many cameras and tech like Microdot and other cameras that were not sold to or used by the public.