Remember the Brownie?

Remember the Brownie I bought a couple weeks ago? I was reasonably sure that the Kodak Brownie Bullet I bought on ebay worked. I just didn’t know if it would take decent pictures. Well, it does! Maybe?

I got my first (test) roll back from The Darkroom and guess what? They look just like old pictures! Some were overexposed and some were blurry. I suspect the shutter speed has slowed down a bit over the last 50 years since the camera was new.

From what I have been able to tell the original shutter speed was probably 1/50 and the lens was somewhere from f11 to f14 depending on the model. Aperture is still the same of course but the shutter speed could be closer to 1/30 or less due to age and wear so from now on I will have to adjust my shooting locations and composition to try to avoid over exposure. Way back in the days of Brownies and Box cameras everyone had to stand squinting into direct sunlight, smile, and be very, very, still to take a good picture. Needless to say, I will also have to make doubly sure the subject and camera are both very still when shooting with this camera.

Here’s one of the better shots from the test roll.

Since then I also bought some Kodak Porta 160 to try. That will be my next experiment in 127 film photography.