Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash

In a slight departure from the previous posts I am going to review a camera that belongs to me instead of one of my grandfathers, although there are multiple examples of this camera in his collection.  Since I am not the owner of those cameras I feel that I should not be using them on a daily basis as I can be hard on cameras and would hate to break one from this collection.  This way I can use my camera and my observations should be valid for the cameras in the collection.

I found this camera at a local Goodwill store for less than five dollars and had to give it a try.  Produced between 1950 and 1961 this Bakelite (an early plastic) box camera requires 620 film, which is a format that Kodak produced specifically for their cameras.  620 film is the same size as normal 120 film, which produces an image 6cm in width, but the  spools that it is on have narrower ends.  In doing this, Kodak ensured that if you purchased one of their cameras that you would have to buy their film as well, as most 120 spools will not fit in the tighter film compartments of 620 cameras.  When I was looking at this camera in the store I found that there appeared to be more room around where the top spool would go and I might be able to squeeze in a roll of 120 film.  When I got home I googled the camera and found that other people had successfully run 120 film spools in the top spot and used an empty 620 as the take up spool.  Lucky when I got the camera it came with two 620 spools in it so I grabbed a roll of Fuji Acros 100 film and loaded it.  The film seemed to fit OK, not perfect but workable.  The pins that fit into either side of the spool seem to be a bit small for the 120 spool so it wobbles a bit but it doesn't seem to affect the pictures.

With my newly loaded camera in tow I rode my bike to the local college campus to try it out.  Now the use of this camera deserves some explanation.  There is no focus, just point and shoot, everything from about 5 feet to infinity is in focus.  There are no shutter or aperture adjustments, the shutter has two settings instant and bulb, while the aperture is preset at a size that I have yet to figure out.  You frame your shot using a small window on the top of the camera that looks through the top lens.  It is designed to be a waste level viewfinder so you have to be a foot or more away to be able to look through it.  Simplicity is the name of the game with this camera.  Load the film, point the camera at your subject and push the shutter.  Thats it.

Using this camera is a totally freeing experience due to the fact that I don't have to think about exposure calculations, light levels, hyper-focal distances, etc.  I am able to focus on my subject instead.  One huge plus with this camera is it is a great people camera.  Since you don't have to bring the camera up to your face most people don't realize that you are taking their picture, making street photography a snap.  I can walk by people and take their picture while smiling at them like nothing is happening.

I just developed the first roll of film that I shot with this camera and I am pleasantly surprised.  The negatives came back great, much better than I expected from a plastic camera with a single element glass lens (for those of you who are not photo nerds, most cameras have multiple pieces of glass that correct for distortions in the image, producing a higher quality lens and in theory a sharper image).  Here are a couple examples, scanned in super low quality, cause thats all I have access to right now.

Since getting this roll developed I have shot one more roll of black and white and I am on my second roll of color, which I am looking forward to seeing the results of how this low quality lens renders colors.  I will keep you posted.  As for now I am going to go shoot some more with my current favorite camera, the Kodak Hawkeye Flash.

A Kodak for the Fashionable 1930's Woman

Going through one of the many boxes of cameras I came across one that immediately caught my eye.  Most cameras from the early part of the 20th century were pure form over function, and were mostly black.  It seems like camera companies were focused on putting a camera in peoples hands that worked and was easy to use rather than the look of the camera.  This seems to have changed at the end of the 1920's as Kodak decided that there was an untapped market that they needed to cater to, women.  

Kodak had been making reliable cameras since the late 1880's, starting with the original Kodak box camera and eventually morphing into folding cameras that were small enough to fit into a coat pocket.  There are multiple versions of the Kodak Vest Pocket in my grandpas collection but none as colorful as the Kodak Petite.  In 1929 Kodak released series of art deco versions of the Folding Vest Pocket camera that were marketed specifically to women.  This camera is a tiny version of the earlier Kodak folding cameras.  It takes film that is designated 127, which is a roll 46mm tall.  It creates negatives that are 4x6.5cm which is quite a bit larger than the popular 35mm size.  127 film has pretty much faded from existance, but there are a few places that you can still buy it.  There is a Canadian company that is taking Kodak film and trimming it to fit 127 roles and I have had really good results using it in a 127 film camera that I use on a pretty regular basis, I will probably do a write up on it later.  

The workings of this camera are pretty simple.  There are two settings for the shutter, I for instant and T for time allowing you to make longer exposures in lower light situations.  The aperture settings are a series of different sized holes drilled into a disk that rotates to give the lens a larger or smaller setting.  There is a very small viewfinder which you can see on the top right of the lens plate that can be rotated 90 degrees to allow the user to make landscapes or portraits.   A very cool feature of this camera is that there is a door on the back that allowed the user to record a note right onto the film, using the silver stylus.  This feature was common on many cameras through out the Kodak range at the time.  Even today I find myself wishing that I could record information about the pictures that I am taking.  An interesting thing to note about this camera is that the lens is behind the shutter, which is why you can't see any glass in the picture above.  

This camera was the camera phone of its day, not a very technical camera but with enough features to get the job done.  The size of the Vest Pocket cameras intrigues me and must have intrigued my grandpa as well since his collection has a bunch of them, this one defiantly being the most interesting and colorful.  

Kodak Tourist

I picked this camera as the first for my new blog after hearing about it on the latest Film Photography Podcast.  They did a review of the Tourist II and while listening to the podcast I realized that there was an earlier model in the collection, so I grabbed it out and started giving it a closer look.

This camera was made in the USA by Kodak between 1948 and 1952, which puts in right in the middle of the baby boom fueled snapshot craze that griped the US after WWII.  This camera, while produced as an affordable version of the Tourist range has a nice feel to it.  It has the heft of mid 20th century camera quality that lets you know that there is more metal than plastic in its construction.

This Tourist has a single Kodet lens which makes it the lower quality model.  It has a single shutter speed of 1/50 plus a bulb and time mode.  The only exposure adjustments are the aperture which is adjustable from f/12.5 to f/32.  This allows the user to adjust for different light levels but it is pretty much limited to outdoor use.

There is no focus adjustment, which simplifies shooting with this camera and due to the smaller aperture the focus seems like it would be pretty good over a large depth.  It seems like this is a precursor to the point and shoot cameras that became popular in the 1980's.  Unlike many earlier folding cameras this one does not require the user to cock the shutter.  It also has the shutter release on the front plate of the camera which when unfolded becomes the side.  This makes using the shutter much easier than earlier camera that had the shutter release on the lens.

This version of the Tourist takes the now unavailable 620 film that Kodak made exclusively for their cameras.  Luckily the film is the same as the popular and still available 120 format, the film spool being the only difference, which means that if you can find an empty 620 spool you can put 120 film onto it and use this camera.  Because it used the larger 620 film it creates a negative that measures 6cm tall and 9cm wide, which is huge compared to the 2.4x3.6cm size of a 35mm negative.  I think that the reason behind the large negative on a camera with such a low quality lens was the ability to do contact prints yielding 6x9cm prints.  This made it much easier and cheaper to print the film because with contact printing you place the negative directly on the paper, eliminating the need for a large costly enlarger.  This made home printing much more accessible for the average person.

The folding of this camera makes it very easy to carry for a medium format film camera. It also folds with a much smoother feel than older folding Kodaks that I have seen.

I don't know if my grandpa ever shot with this camera but of the folding cameras that I have seen in his collection this seems like one of the more user friendly models.  Pretty much all you have to do is unfold, pick the aperture, frame your shot and click.

First Post!

Hi and welcome to my new blog.  I am starting this as a way of sharing my love of photography and vintage cameras with my family and the rest of the world.  Just a warning that this is my first attempt at making a blog so it it is a bit rough please forgive me, this is going to be a learning experience.  Now on to some background.
My grandfather was an avid photographer and camera collector during the golden days of photography.  In the post WWII days of the inexpensive Kodaks, vivid colors of Kodachrome and way before any thoughts of the digitization of photography that is in full swing these days.  My grandfather had eight children which gave him ample subjects to shoot but it also limited his ability to purchase the newest and greatest of camera technology.  From talking with my grandmother she told me that he was a big fan of swap meets and second hand cameras which is evident when looking through his collection.  There are no Leicas or Hasselblads but there is a really good representation of cameras used by the common working class person from the early 1900's through the 1970's.  Using this blog I hope to show a little glimpse into my grandfathers passion and through that a little of my own as well.