Monday 28 February 2011

Week 61 - Kodak Instamatic 500


Kodak Instamatic 500, originally uploaded by pho-Tony.
My dad gave me this camera recently, he got it for next to nothing at a car boot sale several years ago.
The Kodak Instamatic range is normally associated with very basic point and shoot cameras, but there were a handful of more high spec models, and this one is the top of the range. It has a Xenar lens and a Compur shutter, with a built in coupled Selenium cell exposure meter which still seems to work.
The main problem with using these cameras is that the 126 cartridge format is long obsolete, and one has to rely on using old film. There was an unopened film in my dad's garage, which expired in 1993, and I've loaded that into the camera, it remains to be seen whether there is any life left in it!

1 comment:

  1. Kodak were Microsoft of the photographic industry... forever inventing new film formats & cameras to go with them, which invariably disappeared within 10 years after they decided their built-in obsolescence had been reached, and they wanted a new cash cow to milk. Also, their cameras were junk, they never invented any that were original or good. (I'm talking about their cameras, not their film).

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