Pocket sized camera

In a pocket-sized still camera having a horizontally elongated housing formed by top and bottom walls, vertical front and rear walls extending between the front and rear margins of said top and bottom walls, and end walls extending between the side margins of the top, bottom, front and rear walls, the top and bottom walls of the housing being closely spaced relative to the front to back dimensions thereof and to the spacing between said housing end walls, to provide a relatively thin and narrow camera housing elongated in the direction between the end walls thereof and which can be readily placed in a shirt pocket when oriented so the longitudinal axis thereof is vertically oriented, said front wall having an opening behind which the camera lens means is located;

• exposed manually operable trigger means for operating shutter mechanism on the camera;
• a flash unit-receiving member mounted for rotation into a number of different operative stable positions and having an outer flash unit-receiving end exposed to the outside of the housing and adapted to support a multilamp flash unit having a number of flash lamp and reflector sections spaced around a central axis of symmetry thereof coextensive with the axis of rotation of the flash unit-receiving member, and exposed manually operable film winding means for advancing the film in the camera one frame position after the taking of a picture, the improvement wherein said flash unit-receiving member is positioned at one of said end walls of the housing so the axis of rotation of the flash unit-receiving member extends horizontally or transversely from the housing end wall, so the multilamp flash unit supported therein has its central axis of symmetry similarly extending horizontally or transversely of said housing end wall in a direction of the longitudinal dimension of the camera housing and the camera with the flash unit attached can be positioned comfortably in a shirt pocket or the like, there is provided exposed manually operable flash operation on-off control means operable at least when the flash unit is mounted in said flash unit-receiving member for movement between "on" and "off" positions, flash unit operating means in the housing responsive to the movement of the flash on-off control to the "on" position for rendering the flash lamp section in front of the flash unit supported on the flash unit-receiving member operative upon operation of said manually operable trigger means, said flash unit being inoperative when the flash on-off control is in its "off" position even when the flash unit is mounted on said flash unit-receiving member, whereby the multilamp flash unit need not be removed from the flash unit-receiving member if a flash operation is not desired, and flash unit rotation means responsive to the operation of said manually operable film winding means for effecting rotation of the flash unit-receiving member in a given direction to the next stable position thereof only in response to the first film winding operation after a picture is taken when the flash on-off control is in its "on" position and independently of the actual position of the flasher on-off control at the time the film winding operation takes place.