Here is a great family photograph from the first roll of
Kodak Portra 400 through my new (to me) Kodak Brownie Six-20 box camera. This
is of course what these fine old box cameras were designed to do and I can
remember my Mother taking shoeboxes and photo albums full of these kind of
pictures, except in those day (1950’s & early 1960’s) they were all black
and white.
The image is a little fuzzy but that is likely as much from
my unsteady hand as anything else. This is actually one of the sharper images I
took on this first roll. Sixty years ago my mother took great photos with a
camera just like this one but I freely admit to feeling a little awkward
holding and operating the shutter. With a likely shutter speed of 1/50 or less
holding the camera absolutely still during the exposure is essential and takes
a little practice.
Its also noteworthy that unlike modern photographs that are
generally taken with the camera held at “eye level” these old box cameras require
that you look down through the “waste level” viewer so that the camera is
actually looking up at the subjects providing a different point of view for all
photographs.
