Once upon a time, a number of years ago, I had inspired to leave the IT world and become a professional photographer. Now, for a number of reasons, that never happened, but I do consider the time and energy I put into it as well spent; to this day I have a love of the art of photography and, just as importantly, a strong love and appreciation for the technology that goes into photography.
So, today, being National Camera Day in the US, I felt it would be appropriate to share some of that technology that currently sits in my collection. To begin, here is the oldest camera that I own, an old Kodak Brownie.
This is, in fact, the Kodak Model D, and was the second antique camera I had ever obtained. I've shared this one before, and I still love it. It needs some TLC, needs to be cleaned, but is still fascinating.
Now this Kodak Brownie was actually the first antique camera I had bought. It was made in the 1940's and is really little more than a camera obscura with film loaded into the back.
Another Brownie in my collection, the Six-16 has a really need shape to it; it is wedged shaped instead of box shaped, which I'm sure helped the light entering through the aperture to not bounce around so much. The Six-16 is actually an older model than the Six-20 above. It's a brick. I could drop it and it would probably just land with a thud.
Now this is a fun camera. The Balda Baldinette was a West German camera from the 1950's. It's compact enough to fit in a pocket, yet still has bellows to make it look Really Damn Bad Ass.
Fun fact: this little tab that is so prominent on the front of many of these bellow cameras actually has a purpose, to stand the camera up in portrait mode:
Now you know.
The last camera I'll show right now is the newest in my collection: The Polaroid Land Camera Model 95. I found this at an antique store just the other day for $20. It, too, has the tab on the front to hold the camera steady.
Some other interesting facts about this camera:
- Made in 1948, this was Polaroid's first "instant picture" camera. 1948. Pretty neat.
- The camera was named "Land Camera" after Polaroids founder, Edwin Land. The "Land" nomer was dropped after he left the company.
This is an instant camera, so normal film cannot be dropped into it to work. I have found a very old, expired box of film that will fit this camera on eBay. It must be nearly as old as the camera itself, but I have bought it and will load it after I receive it. Hopefully the film won't be too far gone.
Happy National Camera Day!