Newman Sinclair 35mm camera magazine: Damien Parer, Department of Information cameraman

Rectangular duralimium cased film cartridge with a handle on the front side to assist with the removal from the camera. This originally held 200 feet (approximatley 60 m) of film. The top of the magazine bears a stock barcode from Film Australia and three coloured (red green and yellow) stickers. A number (6) is impressed into the face of the cartridge. The reverse of the cartridge holds the circular receivers for the spring cogs. Currently this cartridge is located inside the Newman Sinclair camera.

The magazine holds 200 feet (approximatley 60 m) of film and was made by Newman-Sinclair for their Autokine 35 mm camera. The film can be loaded and unloaded in a dark bag by the user. This magazine is locked securely in the Newman-Sinclair camera by the closing of the film door and the tightening of the LOCK/RELEASE wheel, which engages with a keyed cog on the magazine. The opposite side of the magazine lines up with the two camera-spring drives.

Among the cinematographers employed by the DOI was Damien Parer, who worked for that department from late 1939. Parer had prior experience with the Newman Sinclair cine camera, having been appointed director of photography for the 1938 film 'This Place Australia', shot in and around Katoomba and Bathurst. After production wrapped up, Parer was offered a job as cameraman and still photographer with the Cinema branch of the Department of Commerce in late 1939. Almost immediately after (and with the declaration of war coming only a few weeks later), the entire Cinema Branch was transferred to the Department of Information along with its cameramen and its equipment. In January 1940, Parer was issued with this Newman Sinclair (serial number 305), a Bell and Howell Eyemo and a Zeiss Contax, and boarded a transport heading for the Middle East.

Parer filmed with this Newman Sinclair on numerous occasions in the Middle East, Greece and Syria and possibly in 1942 in New Guinea, but when he resigned from the DOI in August 1943, he handed back his camera equipment when he joined the US based Paramount, where he was issued with a Bell and Howell Eyemo and a Kodak. He was killed filming the American marine invasion of Peleliu Island on 7 September 1944.