Look at your camera cabinet and pick an old, less expensive, simple camera you don’t normally use, shoot a roll of film and write a musing. This was -in my own words- Gordon’s urge to me.
What’s in my camera cabinet that qualifies? The Lubitel, my Grandmother’s Kodak Hawkeye flash model, the Ihagee Ultrix simplex, my fathers Yashica J and a Kodak box camera. All cheaper and simpler than other’s I own, but with a special place in my heart.
Decided on the Kodak. A blue Kodak Brownie No2 model F I bought for Elina, my partner in life. Had to be blue, her favourite colour.
The Kodak Brownie No2 is the first Kodak box camera to use 120 film. This blue colour Brownie was made in Great Britain between 1929-1933. It has 3 aperture choices -possibly f11,f16 & f22- a single shutter speed of about 1/50 and option for long exposures.
There are two metal levers on top, the wide one in the middle controls the aperture and the thin one on the side is for long exposures.
There is an film advance wheel and the shutter release on the side. The shutter release goes up and down, in both occasions the shutter is triggered.
The Kodak Brownie No2 -like most box cameras of the same shape- has two viewfinders. One in the top for vertical shots and one on the side for horizontal. It also has two standard 1/4” tripod holes, one in the bottom and one in the side.
On the back there is the distinctive red window to aid in advancing to the next frame, a classic on most old oldies. On this blue body the red circle makes a favourite detail.
I fed a Fomapan 200 to the Brownie and went out. The simplicity of a box camera frees your mind. I have to free myself and experiment more without too much thinking with the other more sophisticated cameras too.
Like Gordon I too didn’t check the cleanliness of the camera. The negatives have many line marks, caused -I think- by dirty rollers on the films path towards the take up spool. The lens resolution is kind of typical from the humble 1920’s meniscus. We don’t care. We are not in it for the resolution. We are in it for the photographs.
A box camera is one of the simplest camera’s to use. It is fun. It is history. It is freedom. And most of them out there still work.
Nasos Papathanasiou
pnasium 