Kodak Instamatic 150

Perhaps the dustiest of shutters! It was produced in the mid 60s, but it is so utterly obsolete at this point that in some ways, it's more of an antique than, say, the Agfa Silette, although it is slightly younger. I found this guy at one of the SPCA thrift stores, where I got to hang out with a super mellow kitty.

This model is incredibly broken, in every way, so even if the film it takes was still available, I wouldn't be able to test it. That being said, it's a very interesting study in photographic history.

There's a fella over at Dusty Gizmos who does pretty much what I'm doing here, only better... He was around when a lot of this junk was brand new so he has a thorough understanding of the cultural and technical influence they've had. He explains that the 126 cartridge was introduced by Kodak to encourage people to use lots of film and not to get hung up on expensive gear. Clever, eh?

126 cartridges, and their successor, 110 cartridges enjoyed a lot of popularity. The cameras were dirt cheap and you just had to pop the cartridge in and snap away, but as you would expect, the pictures weren't always that great. Besides the lack of care put into making the cameras, the film itself is incredibly narrow (126 was around 26x26mm, 110 was 13x17mm), so obviously you wouldn't get the same angle of view or depth of field as you would with a larger format. Although the Instamatic itself died out in the late 80s, Instamatic type cameras were so cheap that they were sold well into the 90s as toys. Here's a camera that my parents gifted me with when I was a kid after it became clear I wasn't going to stop playing with their gear.

I put as much thought into those photos as one might expect, but maybe it sowed the seed for this very blog!

All that being said, as you know already, no matter how cheap or crappy the camera, there's usually a little something extra that goes into a photo that can make it beautiful, even if it was not thought out or created with technicality in mind in any way.

This young Italian lady scanned some photos from 1977, which say it all: Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino - Analogue Memories.

Edit: August 6, 2011
Previously I had a picture from Junk Store Cameras on this post to show the Barbie instamatic camera I had as a kid. I used the owner's image without permission! Fortunately I've tracked down my own camera in my parents' house, hence the new image. However, please visit Junk Store Cameras! Marcy is a great writer and her website has a lot to offer.

Have a good week!
Caity