This wondrous Kodak is the camera I used for my first real travel experience – a trip to Denmark in 1965.
You can read about that experience which includes my first travel journal, a massive collection of tickets, photos I took and an itinerary.
I later carried this camera into a first-year photography course in art college in 1972.
There was a lot theoretical stuff, initially about how cameras worked which included us making a pinhole camera. My instructor was actually thrilled with my camera, although mostly because it reinforced some of the historic qualities of photography.
My camera from the back, showing the pop-up viewfinder for horizontal ‘landscape’ views and the rewind peephole so you could check if the film was rewound.
I’m sure I still have the images I shot and developed somewhere, and if I find them I will put them in here – if I remember rightly they were of Gastown and quite awful. In the meantime I am adding a shot from Denmark in ’65 so one can appreciate the quality of this camera.
At this point in my course we took a lot of theory about shutter speed and apertures, both of which this camera just happened to have, along with its own little tripod!
A close-up of the lens. The f-stops were /12.5, /16, /22, and /32, so really long depth-of-field. The shutter speeds were limited to T (T, a shorter-timed exposure), B (Bulb, a longer-timed exposure where an attachment was used to trip the shutter therefore reducing potential camera shake) and I (Instant, your basic shutter speed, maybe 1/60th of a second???).
But now I digress, to some time spent in Havana, Cuba, and the amazing home-made ‘cameras’ found there.
This guy had gathered a fair-sized crowd based on the camera ‘experience’ he had put together.
His camera contraption was an ancient bellows camera placed within a box. The text on the side is Italian and reads, “The openness that comes from faith…” 
He took our picture and then actually developed the negative image doing some tricky manipulations inside the camera box. Here he is squinting through red glass to see what he’s doing. 
The result was this ‘negative’ showing us sitting on a set of stairs.
He took that negative, folded it in half and set it up in front of a photo of the Capitolo building. So here is the final image of us sitting on some stairs in front of the Capitolo.
He wasn’t the only photographer out there. Here is another with his version of a home-made camera. This one shows the protruding platform where the negative image was placed. 
So back to my first photography course where I was coveting the other student’s cameras, and finally found a second-hand Pentax I could afford for my second-year photography course…
To be continued….
- A Photographic Journey: 1973 to 1979.
- More of the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: A Photographic Journey.
Albatz Travel Adventures 
Thank you for introducing this classic camera to us.
The home made camera, very cool. 🙂
Think what a hit these home-made cameras would be at a fun-fair!
Oh, what a fascinating tale!
This was a fun post – your journey and also – the home made cameras in Cuba
– and side note – I have not made a post for this week’s them yet – but my hubs bought me an expensive camera back in the 1990s – it was so complicated and I had way too much n my plate – and well, dropped it one day and dinged it up – still worked fine – and then ended up donating it to a high school student (she also baby sat for us sometimes) and she used it for her high school course.
thanks for reminding me of that
and love the steps photo
we were so delighted with those little photos of us sitting on the steps – probably even more than any of the photos we actually took with our more distinguished camera!
well that is amazing – probably the culture connection and also it was fun on the steps
Absolutely wonderful! And you have those photos still…and what wonder of a home made camera! Thank you for sharing this incredible gem of a story.
I have lots more photos still – it’s just scanning them all that takes a lot of time – I had just scanned the Cuba ones and had completely forgot about the Cuban ingenuity and their amazing cameras. Sometimes it’s great to look back.
♥
Wow Elizabeth – that was quite a camera! And a built-in tripod no less – no wonder your teacher loved it. Your photography is always wonderful so clearly you’ve mastered the technology which adds to your practiced eye. Loved the story as well as the home-made camera examples. Terrific
I’ve been scanning and discovering old photos – the Cuban ‘technology’ was a recent scanning re-discovery…
Interesting story of the Cubans with the homemade cameras! Looking forward to more.
Great retrospective and analysis.
Love your story! Do you still have that Kodak camera? What a collectors items.
I think I still have it. We downsized a few years ago which is when I photographed everything. The camera was small enough so it’s probably somewhere! It seems that a lot of things I owned were vintage, or antiques or collector’s items – that’s what happens when you never throw anything away!
Wow, that is very creative, the photo of you on the stairs in front of the capital. A very cool keepsake of the trip for sure! I love it!
Fascinating! I have a couple of antique cameras that look similar. They were my late husband’s grandfather’s. But I’ve never tried to find appropriate film and use them. I am solidly in the digital photography age these days. I enjoyed seeing the images from your story.
Ha, ha. Just after I saw your comment I was indulging in a coffee break, and reading a book where this little bit of conversation jumped out at me, “Of course I remember them, but I suspect they are all in museums now, as perhaps I should be.”
What a wonderful story about the street-side innovators in Cuba.
I wonder if they’re still doing it? This was in 2004 before digital took off, and these ‘instant’ photos were a huge hit. On the other hand they’re very talented at keeping cars from the 50s in useable shape so why not cameras?
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