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Prinz 110 Auto Pocket
Camera, 1978
It first appeared in
1972 almost exactly 10 years after the Instamatic format was launched. The most
important feature was the small size of the cassette, which resulted in a new
generation of ultra compact cameras. With each frame of film measuring just 17
x 13mm it posed no threat – at least as far as quality was concerned – to 35mm
and the larger film formats, but that wasn’t the point. A 110 camera fitted
snugly in your pocket or purse and you could whip it out and take a picture of
anything that took your fancy with a minimum of fuss. Prinz was a Dixon’s own
brand and unusually, the 110 Auto was a notch or two above most other budget
110 cameras of the day. Points of interest include a simple automatic exposure
system, a ‘one-touch’ sliding film advance lever on the bottom, a light-sensor
on the front, next to the lens, a cable release trigger next to the shutter
button and there’s even a tripod mount on the underside. Low cost electronic
flash was still to come, so to keep the price down this camera used Flashcubes.
This was another ingenious money-spinning idea. Essentially each cube contains
four one-shot flashbulbs, (costing many times as much as four ordinary
flashbulbs), but the really clever thing about Flashcubes was that they were
fired mechanically, similar to striking a match, so the camera didn’t need
batteries. In fact the Prinz 110 Auto does use a battery to power the AE
system, it’s a proprietary 4.5volt design that needless to say is no longer
available. Incidentally, the
optional Flashcube ‘stalk’ was an attempt to avoid redeye. This was a perennial
problem with 110 cameras, due to the proximity of the flash to the centre-line
of the lens. The narrow angle increased the chance of light from the flash
bouncing back from the subject’s retinas into the lens. What Happened To It? 110 cameras were
initially quite successful; there were scores of models to choose from though
it has to be said that most of them were pretty awful. With film size that
small the roles of the lens and exposure system are critical but performance
and quality just wasn’t an issue for most manufacturers. Never the less, the
format enjoyed quite reasonable sales for several years; film was still being
made as recently as 2009, though rumour has it Kodak still has a small scale
plant in operation. The format didn’t die
overnight, but as before it was Kodak that effectively pulled the plug by
introducing its ill-fated Disc format in 1982. By now you may have spotted a
pattern. That’s right, since the 1960s on average Kodak has launched a new film
format every 10 years or so (well almost, the APS format was a bit late and
didn’t appear until 1995…). No prizes for guessing
where this one came from. As with so many other gizmos on these pages it was
rescued from a car boot sale and cost 50 pence. It was an absolute bargain as
it came with an unused film, and a flashcube with two good bulbs. It’s in good
condition too and the winder and shutter still work, but alas the AE system is
all but useless due to the lack of a battery. It should be possible to
refurbish the pack with some modern button cells but that’s a project that will
have to wait for a very dull rainy day. Cameras like these are far too common
to have any real value but there were a number of high-end models made by the
likes of Canon, Minolta, Minox, Pentax and Voigtlander and I imagine that they
could become quite collectable, so it is worth keeping an eye out for pristine,
boxed examples. GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1978 Original Price £10? Value Today? £2 Features: 110 format film, auto exposure, flashcube
flash with extender, slide lever film advance Power req. 538 custom battery pack, 4.5 volts Weight: 170g Dimensions: 125 x 55 x 27mm Made in: Japan Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3 Kodak Brownie Starflash, 1960
But back to the Starflash and it was a hugely
successful design with the first ones appearing in the mid fifties. The black
and silver model I have here was the most common type but there were several special
editions, including a very rare Coca-Cola branded model that’s now worth a very
pretty penny. It’s popularity and longevity can be put down to one thing,
simplicity. It’s a true point-and-shoot design and if was a bit dark, or you were
snapping away indoors, just pop in a flash bulb. There are only two controls, the shutter lever
on the side and a very simple aperture lever beneath the lens for switching from black and
white to less sensitive colour slide film. The cameras takes 12 exposure 127
roll film and this was its Achilles heel. It had to be loaded in near dark
conditions and since this involved threading the end of the reel onto a take-up
spool it was a really fiddly business. You could try loading it in subdued
light but if you got it wrong and light got onto the film it would be fogged,
or if it wasn’t threaded properly it didn’t wind on and you wouldn’t know until
it came back from the processors. Despite all that it did take reasonable
pictures but the prints were very small, measuring 4 x 4 cm or just over
1.5-inches square. Of course you could have them enlarged but it was expensive.
Colour slide film was more successful but it was
quite pricey and of course you needed to have a projector in order to view your
photographs. Flash bulbs too could rack up the price as well but the
disadvantages were more than outweighed by the fun factor, ease of use, robust
build quality and the fact that there’s very little to go wrong. What Happened To It? No prizes for guessing, it was Kodak’s own Instamatic
film cassette, introduced in 1963 that did for the Starflash and most of the
other roll film cameras around at that time. Kodak’s innovative and near
idiot-proof cartridge system solved at a stroke all of the problems surrounding
loading a camera with film and as an added bonus automated processing systems were
able to produce bigger, sharper prints. Millions of roll film cameras were
abandoned almost overnight in favour of the new technology and sad to say, no
one really missed them. This one is a fairly rough example that I picked
up in a Brighton junk shop recently for £7.00. On the plus side it works perfectly and
there was even a roll of film and a pair of vintage batteries inside. I suppose
the price was about right but you will find plenty of better examples on sale
at boot fairs and on ebay for not much more than I paid for this one. It’s far from rare, though, so many were made that you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding one and
you can afford to be choosy and hold out for a mint example in its original box or case,
or splash out on one of the scarcer two-tone coloured versions. By the way, films, flashbulbs and processing can still be found but
think twice before using one to take photographs as it could develop – pun intended –
into a very expensive habit… GIZMO GUIDE Manual First seen: 1955 Original Price £8.00 Value Today? £10 - 50 depending on condition Features: Fixed shutter & focus, two-position aperture
(colour/black & white), Dakon lens, integrated flashgun, 127 roll film,
M2/M3/M5/M25 flashbulbs, carry strap Power req. 2 x AA Weight: 180g Dimensions: 130 x 55 x 85mm Made in: USA Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Polaroid Supercolor 635CL Instant Camera 1985
In the 70s and 80s just about everyone owned a
Polaroid camera at one time or another, and generally – though I have no hard
data to back this up – purchased two or three packs of film then aghast at the
real cost of instant photography, put the camera into the back of a cupboard
and forgot about it. In other words they are not rare, though when Polaroid
announced a couple of years ago they were stopping production of film packs I
suspect quite a lot disappeared into landfill – but that’s not quite the end of
the story as we will see in a moment. Like most Polaroid cameras the 635 is absurdly
easy to use, just open the door at the front, slide in a 10-print 600 film pack
(the film pack also contains the battery), close the door, snap open the lens
cover/flash bar, frame the shot, press the button and out pops a print that
develops in daylight in around a minute. If you were very lucky it didn’t look
too bad. Most of the time though it looked awful, so you took another one, and
if you listened very carefully you could hear the sounds of hands rubbing
together and cash registers jingling at the Polaroid Corporation. If there wasn’t enough light the flash would
fire, and if you judged the result too light or too dark there’s a simple
slider control on the front under the lens, so you could take yet another
photo. The 635CL had an added refinement in the shape of a close-up facility,
basically a pair of lenses that slides in front of the main lens and
viewfinder, for snapping subjects between 0.6 and 1.2 metres in front of the
lens. What Happened To It? Following a sustained campaign by diehard fans
Polaroid recently announced that it was going to resume production of instant
film packs. For no good reason that I can see Polaroid cameras have become
quite trendy, especially amongst art students (so my art student daughter tells
me…), and there was sufficient interest to persuade Polaroid to start making
them again. In fact the supply of films never quite dried up and old stocks
have been on sale on ebay, recently fetching silly prices – at the time of
writing 600 film packs were selling for around £25, or well over £2.00 a print. How long this revival will last is anyone’s
guess, I give it a couple of years at best. Instant film cameras became
obsolete for three very simple reasons, they cost a fortune to run, the
pictures were not very good, and the deathblow was finally dealt by digital
photography. There are probably still many hundreds of
thousands of Polaroid cameras still kicking around; this one cost me two quid
at a car boot, so don’t expect anything made from the 1980s onwards to
appreciate much in value in the foreseeable. Older Polaroid cameras are becoming collectable
though, and later high-end models still fetch a good price, but regard that as
an opportunity. Their value should increase in the long term so now is the time
to grab a few good examples and tuck them away, while you are at it, it might
be a good idea to buy a few film packs while you can, they should be good for
at least 10 years if stored properly GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1985 Original Price £50 Value Today? £5 Features: Lens 1:11 / 116mm fixed focus, close-up
adaptor, electronic shutter 1/4 - 1/200th sec, image size 8x8 cm, built-in
flash, Film Pack type 600 Power req. Battery incorporated in film pack Weight: 600g Dimensions:
145 x 90 x 120mm Made in: UK Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 2 Canon Ion RC-260 Still Video Camera, 1988
The rise and rise of the digital still camera
has been nothing short of phenomenal and by my reckoning it happened in just
six or seven years, starting sometime in 2003/4. In fact it took a good 30
years for pixels to replace film and there were several false starts, which
brings us to the Canon Ion, also known as the Q-Pic in Japan and
Xapshot in the US. It was arguably the first successful attempt to
take electronic photography to the masses but it was by no means the first
electronic still camera. That honour belongs variously to Texas
Instruments who filed a patent for an all-electronic still camera in 1972,
Kodak who demonstrated a briefcase-sized prototype camera in 1975 but my vote goes to
Sony who in 1981 showed the first practical model, called the Mavica (MAgnetic
VIdeo CAmera). Sadly it never went into production (though the Mavica name was used on later models) but it set the ball rolling and
back then, after having seen it at a trade exhibition I was absolutely convinced that one
day soon photographic film would be obsolete. Film isn't dead yet and electronic photography took much longer than I expected to take off, but it's
been quite a journey and the Canon Ion had a pivotal role to play in this
story. Prior to its launch in Japan in 1988 there had been several attempts to
launch a still video camera (SVC), but they had all been bulky and
eye-wateringly expensive. The Ion certainly wasn't cheap, costing around £700 -
£800 by the time you'd bought all the necessary accessories, but this was a
fraction of the price of its rivals. However, one of the defining features was that it
didn't look like a conventional still camera, it was curvy and futuristic but more importantly it
overcame one of the fundamental problems of electronic photography in the 1980s, namely
how to view recorded images. Back then home computers -- such as they were -- lacked any significant image display capabilities and there was no
easy or economical way to print out electronic images, so Canon designed the
Ion to connect directly to a an ordinary TV.
By today's standards the spec is laughably
basic, to begin with it's not a digital system, it was loosely based on Canon's
analogue camcorder technology, recording up to 50 still video images with a
resolution of less than 300 lines on a specially designed 2-inch floppy disc.
Essentially these were still frames, and anyone who remembers VCRs of that era
will know how poor the quality of still frame images could be. In short it was
out-performed on almost every level by cheap Instamatic film cameras, but it
was a start and for a while it even looked as though Canon's still video floppy
could become an industry standard format.
What Happened To It? In spite of several attempts to improve
picture quality, including a shift to slightly higher definition 'Hi-Band'
operation SVCs were doomed by the picture quality and the lack of any means of
preserving images, other than on expensive floppies or recording pictures to a
VCR (with a consequent drop in the already dire picture quality); printing
simply wasn't an option at that time due to the cost. New SVCs continued to appear throughout the early 1990s but there was comparatively little interest from consumers and professionals. Then in 1994 the digital still camera (DSC) market came alive, thanks to developments in digital storage, data and image processing plus innovative and increasingly affordable products from the likes of Apple, Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Pentax, Olympus et-al. Like SVCs a decade earlier it was a slow burn to begin with, hardware prices were still very high and quality was still a bit ropey -- compared with film cameras -- but the world had changed.
By then home computers had become almost
commonplace and the Internet was on the rise so now there was a mechanism to store, manipulate, print and share images.
Sales of DSCs finally took off in 2001/2, fuelled by the
development of multi megapixel image sensors, cheaper memory, broadband Internet,
mobile phones, inexpensive colour printers and well, you know the rest... Several Canon Ions passed through my hands for
testing and review in the late 80s and early 90s. They were nice toys to play with but I
can't say they left much of an impression. They were far too expensive
and the quality just wasn't good enough to make me want one, at least not back then. Times change, nostalgia kicks in and after a lengthy search I finally snagged one on ebay. It is the Hi-Band version of the RC-260 and it would have cost a very pretty penny back in the day. I paid £25.00 for it, which I consider a bargain as it came with a full accessory kit and a dozen still video floppies..
My one is in excellent condition and it still works perfectly, using the mains adaptor for power. The weird lead acid rechargeable battery has long since expired and I don't hold out much hope of finding a replacement. Prices for the Ion and its ilk are still quite low, which I find surprising, as I doubt that many SVCs were sold. Cameras like these are bona-fide technology milestones but they seem to have been temporarily forgotten and my guess is they have an excellent chance of becoming a future collectible so keep your eyes peeled. GIZMO GUIDEFirst seen: 1988 Original Price £500 - £800 Value Today? £100, depending on conditionFeatures:
0.5-inch 230K pixel CCD,
9,5mm f/2.4 lens, built-in flash, video
floppy disc, remote control 230 line resolution Power req. 8-volt proprietary lead acid rechargeable Weight: 400gDimensions: 120 x 111 x 50mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 8 Hanimex 220 Disc Camera, 1986
I was handed one of the original Kodak
Disc cameras at the launch, to try out but I must have given it away soon
afterwards once I realised how bad it was. I found this Hanimex 220 at the
bottom of a box in the loft and I’m not sure where it came from but it’s a good
example of the genre. It features the typical slim body, compact lens assembly
built-in flash and motor drive of most of its contemporaries. There’s very
little to say about it, other than it is beautifully simple to use, just pop in
the disc cartridge and a couple of AA batteries and it’s ready to go. The only
controls are a shutter button and a simple slide switch on the front for
setting sunny/dull days and covering the lens. The flash is automatic and a
lever on the top opens the back, for loading and unloading discs. What Happened To It? The Disc camera format was Kodak’s first
attempt to make photographic film look sexy and technically advanced. The early
80s were the start of the digital age and discs were all the rage. LaserDiscs
had been around for a year or two, Compact Disc had just started to make an
impact on the home audio market and first generation PCs were using floppy
discs for data storage. Kodak’s bright idea was to mount the film
on a rotating disc, which instantly made cameras a lot thinner and, in their
view much more likely for users to slip one into their pockets and handbags and
take more pictures. You have to remember Kodak never made a bean out of selling
cameras; all of its money came from selling film and processing. On paper it
sounded like a good idea, the trouble was the tiny films – each one measured
just 11 x 8mm – had to be massively enlarged and produced truly awful grainy prints.
Most camera manufacturers had a half-hearted stab at the Disc format but after
a brief flurry of interest most users gave up on them and moved onto the
increasingly popular and vastly superior compact 35mm cameras that were coming onto
the market. Disc cameras were only around for a few years. Kodak finally pulled
the plug on the format in the late 90s to concentrate on its next white
elephant, the APS format, but that’s another story for another day… I believe
you can still buy disc film and there are a handful of specialists capable of
processing it but it has little value beyond that of a short-lived novelty. Nevertheless,
as time goes by cameras will become scarcer so if you have one, or spot a
particularly nice one at a boot sale, preferably still in its box and selling for
less than a couple of pounds, grab it. It might actually be worth something one
day… GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1986 Original Price
£25? Value Today?
£1? Features:
f2.8, 12.5mm 3-element lens, automatic flash, motor drive, optical
viewfinder Power req. 2 x AA Weight: 160g Dimensions: 115 x 82 x 27mm (whd) Made in: Hong Kong Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 3
Waco TV Slide Lighter, 1970?
This Waco ‘TV’ does have some
visual features, though. It’s a slide viewer; pop a 35 mm transparency in a
slot in the top and it appears on the screen and a small light bulb behind the
screen lights it up. It has another hidden talent; it’s also a cigarette
lighter. Press the button on the top and the spring loaded lighter cover pops
up. The spring mechanism strikes a flint that lights a petrol soaked wick. It
probably ran for years on a filling. Around one third of the TV case is taken
up by the petrol tank, the other two thirds are occupied by a pair of ‘C’
cells, to power the viewer bulb. The pretend TV is superbly
detailed, all the knobs look as though they should work, the big one at the top
actually does, it’s the switch for the slide bulb. The mind boggles at the
concept of a fake miniature TV with a built-in slide viewer and cigarette
lighter. What were they on? I grew up in the 60s and 70s and it was a strange
time but I can’t say I ever remember anyone passing round the slides and fags… I’m not sure where it is made,
there are no marks other than the ‘Waco’ badge and I haven’t managed to find any
references to it on the web. My guess is it hails from Japan or Hong Kong, but
that’s pure speculation based solely on the styling of the TV. If anyone knows
better I would love to know. What happened to it? Novelty table ciggy lighters are
quite common though mostly they have just the one obvious function and I can’t
see this weird combination of features being especially popular so I suspect it
didn’t hang around for very long. This particular one has suffered from leaky
batteries at some point. Fortunately most of the damage is inside and after a
good scrub with a wire brush and coating of WD40 it should be okay. The plastic
battery holder disintegrated when I tried to remove it but a modern replacement
fits neatly in the case. I found it at a large antique fair in Surrey and it managed
to haggle the dealer down from a fiver to four pounds, which given that the
condition can only be described as fair, wasn’t a bad deal. GIZMO GUIDE First seen:
1965? Original Price
£5? Value Today?
£5 Features:
Combination cigarette lighter and 35mm slide viewer Power req.
2 x C cell Weight: 0.5kg Dimensions:
98 x 75 x 100mm (whd) Made in: Japan, Hong Kong? Hen's Teeth (10 rarest): 5
Minox B, Sub-miniature Camera 1968
It really is beautifully made, like a fine watch, and as you pull the camera apart you cock the shutter mechanism. You have to set the focus manually; the viewfinder is coupled to the focus dial to minimise parallax errors. For close-up work, photographing documents and secret plans, you use the measuring rings on the chain to gauge the focal distance. The exposure setting is elegantly simple, you press a little button next to the light meter dial to take a reading then rotate the shutter speed dial (the large one in the middle) until an arrow on the meter dial aligns with the meter needle. It’s quick and accurate and just the job if you are in a hurry, with the baddies about catch up with you. When you press the shutter button it makes a really satisfying (though not too loud) clockwork motor sound. There’s more gadgets; the knurled strip above the viewfinder window slides a Neutral Density filter in front of the lens, and there’s a circle marked on one of the two shutter leaves, so you can tell if you’ve taken the shot or not. There’s also an accurate frame counter, a flash synch socket, and shed loads of accessories, that Q would be proud of. There even used to be specialist films including, as I recall, infrared film for really dark conditions. Best of all, it takes really great pictures. What Happened to It? The Minox heritage lives on and the company, now owned by Leica still makes miniature and sub-miniature cameras. Personally I don’t think the modern ones are a patch on this one and its predecessors. They are still small and very cute but they just don’t look like proper spy cameras any more. As I say I bought this one over 30 years, along with a Minox developing tank, which I stupidly sold to another enthusiast some years later. I think I paid around £50 for both items, which was probably a bit over the top. Quite a few model B’s were made so they’re not exactly scarce; model As are rarer and therefore dearer. Good Minox Bs can be found on ebay for less than £100, and considering the precision workmanship I reckon that’s a fantastic bargain. GIZMO GUIDE First seen: 1958 Original Price £75.00? Value Today? £100.00 Features: Complan Lens, f=15mm, manual shutter (T, B, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/20, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/500, 1/1000), manual focus (8in – infinity)2 –stage ND filter, external flash sync, Selenium light meter, measuring chain, Power req. n/a Weight: 125g Dimensions: 100 x 28 x 18mm (case closed) Made in: Germany Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6
Polaroid
Land Camera Model 330 1969
The 330
is a real handful, and that's before you've figured out how to unfold it and
drive the bizarre rangefinder focus mechanism. Once you've taken a picture you
need three hands to develop a print. It's a real palaver, first you have to
pull a white tab, then pinch and tug at a yellow tab that draws the print
through a set of rollers, spreading a secret chemical concoction across the
surface of the exposed negative and positive papers. You then had to carefully
time the process, making sure it was neither too hot or too cold, then peel it
apart. Most times you ended up with an image that was either too bright or too
dark, so you had to start over. It was sheer genius and Polaroid couldn't lose
with prints working out at around a pound a pop (and that was when a pound was
worth something...). What
Happened To It? The 330
was phased out in the early 1970s to be replaced by a new range increasingly
elaborate instant cameras and although briefly challenged by the likes of Kodak
and Fuji, Polaroid was the only game in town if you wanted a picture on paper
in a hurry. Then it all came crashing down in the early 1990s with the first
stirrings of digital cameras. It took another ten years before digicams and
colour printer technology came of age but it was all downhill from and
eventually even professional photographers, who had kept the technology afloat,
bailed out. This one is a boot sale bargain, it cost £5.00 (haggled down from £8.00) and it came complete with the original flashgun, leather carry case and even the instructions. It is in fantastic condition and I have every reason to suppose it is good working order but I'll have to wait until I can find a film for it. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1969 Original
Price
£40 Value Today? £25 Features:
Instant camera, 2-element 114mm, f/8.8
lens, rangefinder focus, auto ‘electric eye’ shutter manual iris
(lighten/darken), 75/3000 asa colour/black and white film, film timer,
detachable flashgun Power req. n/a Weight: 1kg Dimensions: 200 x 150 x 75mm Made in: USA Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 51
Chinon 722-P Classic Super 8 Cine, 1973
The Chinon 722-P Classic featured here is a prime example; it’s a mid-range ‘family’ model that uses Super 8 film cartridges, developed in the 1960s. As the name suggests the film used is 8mm wide, each cartridge holds 50 feet of film, enough to 3 minutes and 20 seconds of shooting. This model has only a handful of controls, the start/stop button on the handgrip and zoom rocker on the top. There’s also an on/off switch on the side and a battery test button on the top, and that’s it. Just load four AA cells into the handle, pop in a film cartridge, frame the shot in the optically coupled viewfinder and press the Start button. Everything is automatic and the only decision you need to take when to start and stop recording. When the film is finished you send it off to be developed. The more adventurous, and those making, shall we say more exotic sorts of films, could develop them at home, usually with nothing more complicated than a bucket and a bottle or two readily available chemicals. The real problem was cine came when the film was returned and the need to mess about setting up a screen and a projector. On the plus side editing was really easy, all you needed was a pair of scissors and some sticky tape. Another major advantage of cine, that’s been long forgotten in the age of video, was that with so little filming time to play around with the need to think carefully about each shot meant that each shot counted and little was wasted. The Chinon 722-P is really sturdily made, very well balanced and since this one is still working faultlessly after more 30 years, you can take it as read that it was very reliable. What happened to it? In a word, video. The first clumsy and overweight portable video outfits appeared in the late 1970s but they were little of no threat to cine. Then in the early 1980s the first camcorders were launched, they were still large and clumsy but by the mid 80s small hand-held models were coming out of the woodwork. Prices fell and by the late 80s cine was dead. Ironically it wasn’t until the mid 90s that video picture quality started to beat top-end cine but it was all over for film. There’s a still a small hard core of enthusiasts and cine cameras are a regular at car boot sales (this one cost me £2.00) so there are plenty of bargains to be had but grab-em quick, they are disappearing fast. GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1972 Original
Price
£100.00 Value Today? £15 Features:
2 x power zoom, auto exposure, through-the-lens
optical viewfinder Weight: 0.8kg Dimensions: 180 x 53 x 180 mm Made in: Japan Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 4 Kodak EK2 ‘The Handle’ 1977 (manual)
However, although the cameras were comparatively cheap, film packs were horribly expensive, costing around ten times as much as normally developed film and everyone knew most instant cameras were bought by people who wanted to take pictures that were, shall we say, of a ‘private’ nature… Incidentally, in 1977 Polaroid developed an ‘Instant Movie’ camera system, called Polavision, it was a huge flop, and the timing was dreadful, coming just a couple of years before the first video movie systems.
Polaroid had the instant
still camera market pretty much to themselves but in the mid seventies Kodak
and several other manufacturers bought out instant film cameras, though as we
shall see Polaroid were not about to give up their market dominance without a
fight.
The Kodak EK2 dates from 1977 and was quickly dubbed ‘The Handle’ because of the large handgrip. It’s very easy to use, pop in a 10-shot PR10 pack, crank the handle and its ready to go, the film number is shown in a small window on the back. To take a shot frame your subject in the optical viewfinder, pull back on the large blue shutter button on the right side, crank the handle and out comes the print, which develops in daylight in a couple of minutes. If the picture was too light or dark there’s a crude exposure control on the lens, operated by a thumbwheel. Indoors or in the dark you clipped on a Flip Flash, which contains a set of 10 flashbulbs. Like the Flashcube it was a brilliant way of extorting money from users, with Flip Flash bars costing several times as much as the equivalent number of single-shot flashbulbs.
What Happened to It? Kodak’s dalliance with Instant Film cameras lasted from 1976 to 1986 and was brought to an abrupt end following a two-year lawsuit bought against the company by Polaroid, for infringing its patents. Part of the ruling was that Kodak had to stop production and compensate stranded camera owners. Anyone who owned one could return it to Kodak in return for a cash, coupons and rebates. This meant that although millions of them were made relatively few are still in circulation. Unfortunately there’s little or no possibility of this or any other Kodak instant camera ever working again but makes an interesting addition to any gadget collection. Good examples, complete with case and accessories can only increase in value.
GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1977 Original
Price
£40 Value Today? £20 Features:
10-shot Instant camera, manual
‘lighten-darken’ exposure control, 10-shot ‘Flashbar/Flipflash’, manual wind Power req. 6V ‘J’ Battery Weight: 0.8kg (ex film pack) Dimensions: 140 x 175 x 140 mm Made in: England Hen’s Teeth (10 rarest): 6 Kodak Instamatic Camera & Magicubes 1972
It all sounds a bit obvious
now but before then you had to faff around with roll film, threading it onto a
roller that more often than not didn’t wind the film on properly. 126
Instamatics remained tremendously popular for more than 10 years. The 56X was
nothing special, just one of hundreds of very basic fixed focus and exposure
manual wind cameras made by Kodak and countless other manufacturers but because
they were so cheap and cheerful they were regarded as semi-disposable so
probably not that many have survived. The amazing Magicube really
deserves its own Dustygizmo slot. What makes Magicubes really clever is the
fact that they are pyrotechnic, rather than electrical devices. As you probably
know one-shot flashbulbs are filled with a fine magnesium ribbon that’s ‘fired’
by passing a small current through an element. This heats up the magnesium so
that it burns and gives off a brilliant flash of light. Magicubes were more
like small fireworks. They are fired by the camera pressing a pin in the base
of the bulb. It works a bit like striking a match, setting off the magnesium in
the bulb. It’s simple, reliable (mostly) and there’s no need for batteries.
More importantly for Kodak and the other manufacturers they were very
profitable as they cost several times as much as ordinary flashbulbs What happened to it?Magicubes were always a bit of a con, most users disliked them because they were expensive and incredibly wasteful and they all but disappeared when cheap electronic flash systems were developed. Sales of 126 Instamatics
had started to tail off by the early 1970s so Kodak introduced the 110
cartridge format in 1973, which enabled cameras to be made even smaller and
cuter. After an initial burst of interest that too started to wane, so Kodak’s
next attempt to maintain their market share was the ‘Disc’ camera format in
1982 (pencilled in for a future Gadget of the Week). It didn’t do very well and
by that time first generation digital still cameras were just starting to
appear. Kodak never saw it coming
and plugged away with its core photographic film business and in 1994 it introduced
its last gasp effort, the clever but ultimately doomed APS format. But by then
it was too late, digital photography had started to take off, Kodak belatedly
jumped aboard the bandwagon but it lost out by being so slow and it has seen
its film camera business virtually disappear. But relics like these live on and
are becoming collectable, especially the more elaborate Instamatics; there was
even an SLR type. Look out too for Disc cameras; because of the format’s lack
of popularity and relatively short life they are comparatively rare and good
examples could become a worthwhile investment. Check out the Kodak Classics website for everything
you ever wanted to know about these cameras
GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1972 Original
Price
c £20 Value Today? £1 Features:
Fixed focus
f/11, 43mm lens, 1/50th sec shutter, manual wind, Magicube socket, optical
viewfinder Power req. n/a Weight: 200g Dimensions: 110 x 65 x 60 (very approx) Made in: England Rarity: 4 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth) Nimslo 3D Camera 1980
It’s an ingenious design and one of the key selling points was that it used ordinary 35mm film. When you click the shutter it takes four images through each of its four lenses. The horizantal distance between the lenses -- the outer ones are spaced approximately to equal to that of our own eyes -- means that each image is taken from very slightly different angle to it neighbour. The really clever part, though, is in the processing. The four images are layered one on top of each other, and on top of that is a thin, grooved transparent film, called a ‘Lenticular’ screen. The grooves act like prisms, so as you alter the angle of the print you see the different layers, giving a strong impression of depth. It’s a bit like one of those toy badges, where the image changes as you move it What Happened to it? Nimslo prints could look spectacular but it took practice to get it just right as you had to pose your subjects and any objects in the field of view to ensure that they were at the optimum distances from the lens, to get the full 3D effect.
Unfortunately only a couple of laboratories were able to handle the special process; it took weeks, sometimes months to get a film developed and it was eye-wateringly expensive. The camera limped on for around 10 years, sustained by a small band of devotees, but it simply cost too much and it was never going to be become a mass-market product. A specialist company in Canada still provides a processing service for Nimslo film and a number of the other 3D cameras that have come (and mostly) gone over the years. If you would like to know more about this fascinating topic pop along to stereoscopy.com.
GIZMO GUIDE
First seen: 1980 Original Price £80 Value Today? £100 Features:
Continuously
variable electronically controlled shutter, fixed focus (1:5 6/30mm) lenses,
35mm film 100 - 400 ASA, manual wind and rewind, flash hot shoe, cable release
socket, double exposure prevention Power req. 2 x alkaline button cells Weight: 0.35kg (ex batteries) Dimensions: 137 x 74 x 43(very approx) Made in: UK Rarity: 8 (1 = common, 10 = Hen's teeth)
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The 110 film cartridge
format was the successor to Kodak’s hugely popular 126 
I try to avoid using the word cool but I’m
going to make an exception for the Brownie Starflash, which has to be one of
the coolest snap cameras ever made. Any digital camera designers out there
casting around for an iconic retro style to pinch look no further. It’s also the
camera I most wanted when I was a kid but by the time I could afford one, in
the early 1960s, cameras like this were becoming decidedly un-cool, for reasons
that we’ll come to in a moment.
By the early to mid 80s when Polaroid’s Series
600 cameras appeared, of which the 635CL is a good example, instant photography
had evolved into a highly refined science. However, taking pictures and seeing
the results a minute or so later were almost a side issue. Polaroid’s real
skill was in merchandising the film packs; it almost gave the cameras away in
order to persuade very large numbers of people to buy them, and then be forever
in their grasp. Sounds familiar? Well, the idea of making money on the
consumables, by subsidising the cost of the hardware has been a successful
business model for manufacturers of inkjet printers for years, and honed to
perfection by the Apple Corporation, for who the iPod and iPhone are just
highly efficient vehicles for selling music, movies and apps. But I digress.
Just about everyone these days has a digital
still camera, and very good they are too, but the really strange thing is how
quickly it all happened. One minute we were all happily snapping away on our
compact 35mm and APS films cameras, the next it was all megapixels and jpegs.
I can remember walking out of the UK
press launch of the Kodak Disc Camera format, back in 1982, thinking this isn’t
going to work. I had the same feeling almost 15 years later, at the launch of
the Kodak APS film format. My uncharacteristically accurate insight into the
workings of the photographic industry was formed in 1981 when I had a sneak
preview of the world’s first digital camera. The prototype Sony Mavica was a
large ungainly beast and I can’t now recall if it actually worked or not, but
it was clear to me that it spelt the end of photographic film, (though it took
almost two decades and a lot of false starts for me to be proved right). Kodak
must have known about the Mavica too but it clearly didn’t see the writing on
the wall and it spent the next 20 years in denial, hoping that somehow digital
photography was nothing more than a passing fad.
If only… No, it’s not a miniature
TV but you’re forgiven for thinking it is one, especially, if like me, you
remember the 
This is real James Bond kit, a classic sub-miniature spy
camera that was first developed back in 1936 by a German chap called Walter
Zapp. The Minox B, which I have here was made between 1958 and 1972, and I
believe this one dates from the late 1960s, due to the type of photo cell used
in the light meter. When I first acquired it, over 30 years ago, film was
readily available and developing was easy too, I actually managed to get films
processed through my local camera shop but now only a relatively small number
of companies can handle the tiny cartridges, which contain 9.2mm wide film. 
I hope
someone will write in and tell me that film packs are still available for the
Polaroid 330 Land Camera but until they do this one is purely decorative.
That's a shame because it's a really funky looking gadget, dating form the late
sixties but those bellows give it the look and feel of a film camera from the
1930s. The 330 was based on a design - the 100 series -- that first appeared in
1963 but Edwin Land, who pioneered the instant film camera, produced his first
models in 1947.
I have to admit straight away that I never got on with
cine. It always seemed to involve a lot of time, effort and expense for very
little result. There’s only so much you can cram into a 3-minute home movie and
in most cases it’s just a few wonky shots of kids cavorting on the beach.
Nevertheless, I absolutely love the mixture of precision mechanics and
technology, and it came to a peak in the seventies, just before it was killed
stone dead by video.
Instant cameras were
all the rage in the sixties and seventies, remember, there were no digital
cameras back then. The concept was brilliant, the film developed on the spot,
so no waiting for prints to come back from the chemist. It was sold as a fun,
family friendly technology.
Two for the price of one
this week with the Kodak Instamatic 56X and the ‘Magicube’. The Instamatic
camera range started in 1963 and was the first commercially successful attempt
to create a totally idiot-proof camera using a drop in film cartridge. The
‘126’ cartridge was fully enclosed and all you had to do was pop it in the back
of the camera, wind it on, point and shoot.
Named after its US
inventors, Dr Jerry Nims and Allan Lo, the Nimslo camera was one of the most
successful attempts at a 3D photographic system to date. Prototypes were developed in
the late 1970s and it finally went on sale in 1980 for around £80; the cameras
were built in the UK, by Timex Ltd. at its Dundee plant.