Kodak Vigilant Six-20 Folding Camera

Now here’s a vintage camera for you! Manufactured from the late 1930’s until 1949 this 6 X 9 camera shoots 620 film.  6cm X 9cm is the size of the negative it produces; 2 ¼” X 3 ½” for all you non-metric types.

This ”folder type camera” was the standard “pocket” camera for most of the first half of the 20^th century and most of them shot 620 roll film until it was mostly discontinued in 1995. There are a few remaining sources for this film. It is virtually identical to 120 roll film which is still made, and most of what 620 film you find these days is actually re-spooled 120 film that has been re-spooled onto the smaller 620 spools. 

I bought this camera from the “shopgoodwill.com” online auction web site for $11.15 and other than a little dust and a sticky shutter it appears to be in excellent shape. All I’ve done so far is clean it up a bit and “exercise” the shutter daily since I got it a few weeks ago. 

Aside from the excellent condition the biggest surprise with this camera is its size. From looking at pictures of these folding cameras I always had the impression that they were much larger than they really are. When folded it is truly a pocket camera. Although a bit heavy for pants pocket it would ride comfortably in a coat pocket.

The f6.3 Anaston lens with the Flash Dakon shutter is supposed to be one of the better versions of this camera but it is not the very best. The lens openings range from f6.3 to f32 and the shutter operates at 1/25, 1/50 and 1/100 with “B” and “T” settings. The 1/100 shutter speed now works almost perfectly as do the B and T settings. The 1/25 & 1/50 speeds still stick about half the time.

I will of course continue to “exercise” the shutter and may even try to dismantle it and clean it but now that I have at least the 1/100 shutter speed working properly the next step is to load it up and try to take some photographs. Stand by for the results!