Not so in our beloved Bronze Age. Many of us, surely, had the sturdy Kodak Instamatic. Complete with rotating flashcubes, and those handy drop-in film cartridges. I had a similar one : a GAF Anscomatic, the camera that helped me archive those halcyon days of the late 60's and early 70's. I probably drove my family and friends bonkers with all my picture-taking.
Here's a shot I took of my bedroom, about 1971, using that Anscomatic camera. You can see several Monogram model car kits on the bookshelf.
Later on I got a Polaroid- you remember, the camera that allowed you to get your pictures now (or at least within a minute or two) rather than waiting for processing. Many of the old photos I've shared on this blog were taken with those cameras. Much as I love digital photography, I still hold a fondness for those vintage cameras.
Any other young shutterbugs out there? Share your memories of the cameras, the films, even the commercials (remember those warm, fuzzy Kodak commercials every holiday season?}. Expose us all to your thoughts and memories, and we'll see what develops...
11 comments:
My father loved photography and in the '50s and most of the '60s he had a good-quality expensive camera (a German Leica I believe) and he developed his own photos in his own darkroom. He sold the camera in the late '60s but in 1981 he bought another one, a Canon, and through the '80s and '90s I borrowed it to take pictures. That camera had a strap with an American stars-and-stripes design on it. In the late '90s he sold the camera and bought a newer model but he died suddenly in 1999 without ever using it. He died just before digital photography came along so I wonder what he'd have thought of that innovation and photos taken with a mobile phone !
And I had one of those instant Button cameras :)
I believe I had that 'Pocket Instamatic' around 1976-78.., I didn't take all that many pics, but most of which I still have.
Great memories of taking pics to get them developed, getting all peeved when I anticipated some great pics and they ended up all blurry all because I moved a MICRO-INCH.... VERY ANNOYING.
I do cherish a great picture my buddy took of George Takei talking to me (in an autograph line) back in August 1977 at the first Milwaukee sci-fi convention. A very nice close-up shot, with beautiful color. Nice memories.
One funny bit of irony.. Just before my Mom passed on last year, she was asking me to sell her high-end Canon camera and accessories. Great condition she said, so she was hoping for some genuine interest on eBay.. She lamented just how much she and my step-dad paid for it in the early '80s.
Funny as it was, a few of my vintage 20cent comics she bought for me were now selling for 30x what that camera set is worth nowadays..
I think we had an Instamatic in the 70s, though it didn't look exactly like that one. It might still be around somewhere.
Later we got the Kodak version of a Polaroid (I can't remember what it was called) and when Polaroid sued for patent infringement or something along those lines, we had to send in the old camera and they sent us back a Kodak Disc ... which we still have, though it's impossible to find film for it now.
My cousin gave me his Pentax in the early 80's when he got a new one. Came with a leather case, extra lens, remote button. Nice set up.
I used it for about 20 years until it started to take pictures with the shutter half closed.
Unfortunately I did not discover this until I got my film back from our Cooperstown trip. AAAARRRGGG!!!
My first SLR, and really my only one, was an International. I believe Russian made, sent over here for the 1980 Olympics. Loved that camera. Hard to find lenses since they were screw on and not bayonet but still a great camera...
Unfortunately, did not get it in time to take pictures of my girlfriend. We met at sleep away camp, you don't know her, she's not from around here...
The Traveling Prowler...
Colin- Leica, very nice. Canon is pretty fine, as well- I shot with a Canon SLR for years, until the digital wave hit (and actually, I still have a Canon digital camera). Did you ever get to help you father in his darkroom?
david_b- ah yes, the great highs of anticipation when you went to pick up your pictures. And the crashing lows, when the shots came back blurry, overexposed, or blank (I once mis-loaded the camera and shot a whole roll with no film winding. Nrrrrrgh....
Oh, and as mentioned above- Canon is great equipment. Your Mom knew her stuff.
Mike W.- A Kodak disc camera! How did that work? Easy to use, or impractical?
Killraven- Oh, the pain of finding out too late. My sympathies!
Prowl- not familiar with an International, but sounds cool. And Russian made; even cooler.
Nice stuff!
Never had a Polaroid but up to the late 90s and early 2000s I had a Kodak film camera, the kind which makes that audible 'whirrr-click' sound whenever you pressed the shutter button. Ah, those were the days!
- Mike 'shutterbug' from Trinidad & Tobago.
When I was a kid, we had one of those horizontal Kodak Pocket Instamatics with the flash cubes and cartridges. They didn't take very good photos but they were wonderful looking things, not to mention convenient, and I always loved the smell of the flash. I have warm memories of repeated attempts to take photos of birds in the garden, not one of which ever managed to capture a single shot of a bird.
The first camera I ever bought was an Agfa Optima Flash compact camera which was very light and took good photos but had a fairly wide angle lens which tended to make everything look a lot further away than it actually was. I was still using it into the early 1990s but, for some reason, it started to let light leak into the film chamber, which meant I finally had to get rid of it.
In the early 1980s I had a Russian Zenit SLR camera which was built like a tank, weighed slightly more than a tank and required serious pressure to work the shutter but it took decent photos and I had a soft spot for it.
Redartz, I was about two years old when my father stopped developing his own photos so no, I never helped him in his darkroom. When he bought the Canon in 1981 he got the photos developed at the chemist from then on.
@Redartz: The Kodak Disc was pretty easy to use. You bought the film in a plastic cartridge and stuck it in the camera, then sent the whole cartridge away to be developed. They sent back the photos, plus disc itself which had the negatives on it. There are some pictures of it here.
It wasn't a bad system, but as soon as they stopped making the camera/discs it was pretty much worthless, since those cartridges wouldn't fit any other camera.
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