Thursday, August 13, 2009

Kodak Brownie Reflex

I found one of these yesterday for $25 dollars while antiquing, and considered buying it. Bakelite body, twin reflex, how do you say no to that? (I'm really in love with twin reflex lately, and this was the first time I've ever had a chance to see/experience holding/using one, and that cemented my love forever.) The shutter seemed to be working, it would wind, the lenses seemed to be in good shape....With great force of personal effort, I vowed to not buy a vintage camera I knew nothing about (like how to load in film!) and do some research first.

The findings: uses a ridiculous* kind of film that isn't hardly manufactured anymore. And by hardly I mean that one company in Croatia is apparently the only company still making it, in the entire world. Croatia. You load it by popping off the entire bottom, via the locking lever on the back. The silver prongs on the front are for a flash. You can find photos on flikr taken with these cameras (there are about a million still in existence) and they're pretty good, almost exactly what I'm looking for in a vintage camera. (*Ridiculous in that I'd never heard of it before, natch. 127)

If it took regular old 35mm, I would have broken into that antique store to steal it by now because that thing is clearly destined to be mine, and what are business hours doing getting in the way of destiny? However, the film thing does sort of throw me. I'm too lazy to track down film, shoot it, and then get it developed. Digital sort of spoiled me, I'm afraid.

Photo, and the pdf of the manual, here.

1 comment:

  1. Canadian made film by Bluefire, available from Frugal Photographer.

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