I had an earlier Photo nostalgia post with some old cameras and film items that some liked so I kept digging. And as I promised I found some more history (junk) sitting in my closet and boxes in my workroom that I can share. The first is a Polaroid Land Camera model 80. These were great because you didn’t have to wait for the processing part. It (the print) was right in your hands in 75 to 90 seconds if I remember right. Probably not.
Old Polaroid Land Camera model 80
Photo by Mike Hartley
I believe this was manufactured between the mid 50’s and early 60’s. It didn’t take that good a quality of pictures but then again it might have been the kids experience holding it that was the limitation. Yeah me. I might have to look a bit deeper and see if there is any old film for this. Wow, that might be fun if I did find some. Anyway its fun to look back at these tools of the trade.
Polaroid Land Camera
Photo by Mike Hartley
I’m not sure of this monsters actual weight, but the term cinder-block came to mind. Oh, almost forgot the flash head that went with this clunker.
Polaroid flash head
Photo by Mike Hartley
Next I found this relic sitting in an old shoe box. A General Electric exposure meter model 8DW58Y4. Back in the day a light meter was a handy tool to have.
G.E. Light/exposure meter.
Photo by Mike Hartley
OK, so this next entry doesn’t have the decades of history but I believe I purchased it on 1996 or early 97. So it’s getting close to 20 years old. But the significance to me at least was that it was my first venture into digital photography in terms of image capture. I’d been digitizing images for at least a decade or two before that through scanners. It’s a Kodak DC 50 and at that time it was expensive as hell because digital was just starting to evolve.
Kodak DC 50
Photo by Mike Hartley
The built-in flash sucked. Though the 3:1 zoom lens (38 mm to 114 mm-equivalent) was a nice feature. The software was a bit buggy but workable. Took a lot of images with this for a weekly newspaper at the time. Was allot cheaper than film and processing then. But that was about the extent of it. Image quality was poor. You had better have good lighting to begin with and a very steady hand because the shutter delay was significant. Which was learning a whole new timing in shooting. One day I’ll go get a batch of old images shot with it. They will be small because resolution on those were nothing and I didn’t keep a lot of the high res because “back in the day” storage was expensive also.
Kodak DC 50 rear
Photo by Mike Hartley
People now know the term mega pixels when it comes to the camera resolution on the phones. For instance the iPhone 6 has an 8 megapixel camera or my wife’s new Galaxy 5 16 mp camera. The Kodak DC 50 above was a stellar 0.38 megapixel. Capturing that with a 756×504 pixel color CCD sensor. That was one of my missed opportunities in life. Once I used that camera I knew that would be the future direction of photography and that film and prints we’re on their way out as the tool for the masses.
Ah, good old Peoples drug store.
Photo by Mike Hartley
Holy crap, I think I uttered “back in the day” more than once in a post. I’ll have to watch myself. My apologies.
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