Kodak started making the Brownie line of cameras with the original Brownie box camera in 1900. Over the years the Brownie line evolved through many versions and led to futuristic designs in the early 1960s like this Brownie Vecta from 1963.

Here you can see the Baby Brownie Special opened up, showing the loading mechanisms and the molded bakelite film path. (Daniel J. Schneider)

Kodak offered the Baby Brownie, a small bakelite snapshot camera with folding frame viewfinder and a center-front mounted, lever-style shutter release, beginning in 1934.

In 1938, the Baby Brownie Special was introduced as an upgrade to the original Baby Brownie. Improvements included a side-mounted (more accessible) bakelite button shutter release, and a top-mounted telescopic optical viewfinder. This little guy was in production until 1954, and given its quality in comparison to other toy cameras I’ve tested, it’s no surprise.

About the Baby Brownie Special

The Baby Brownie Special produces 4×6.5cm negatives (8 to a roll of 127 film), with relatively sharp edges and low distortion. According to Camerapedia, it has a meniscus lens at approximately f/11 and a rotary-type shutter, focuses from about 5 feet to infinity, and the shutter operates at around 1/40 sec. It takes pretty nice pictures for such an inexpensive camera.

The camera comes apart in two halves, like most box-style cameras. The two halves are held together by latches on both sides which slide up to lock the halves together. The tops of the slides are where the ends of the braided leather handle are attached.

The Kodak Baby Brownie Special and its box, front view. (Daniel J. Schneider)

Loading film is basically the same as any box camera. The red window is well-aligned and makes very neatly-spaced negatives. The film advance knob is a touch on the short side, making it difficult for my large fingers to wind the film. It turns smoothly, however, and wouldn’t likely pose the same difficulties for most fingers.

The telescopic viewfinder seems to match about the center 70% of the final frames — meaning you’ll have plenty of room around your subject in the finished product, so get in there.

According to this page from the 1949 Montgomery Ward catalog, at that time the Baby Brownie Special retailed for $3.14, though it is reported to be a mere $1.25 ten years earlier.

About my example

I found my Baby Brownie Special at an antique shop in Salida, Colorado. The box was included, and is not too badly worn. The manual is missing, though. I believe I paid $20, which is in line with or a little cheaper than going eBay.com prices.

I don’t mind paying market price, despite my addiction to thrift stores, for a camera this clean. It looks nearly new, and didn’t even need to be dusted before I put a roll of film through it.

Because I could, a roll of Efke R100 black and white 127 film. (Daniel J. Schneider)

Early in my collecting days, I sort of shunned Kodak cameras because so many of them seemed to be virtually everywhere — a dime a dozen, so to speak. But the more experience I gain with cameras from the 1930s-1960s, the more I realize why Kodak was one of the few names to survive so long (forgetting their current troubles).

The thing about the Baby Brownie Special, while it isn’t any bigger, heavier, or more well-appointed than many of my other simple box cameras, is that everything operates smoothly and accurately. In fact, today I put a roll of film through another vintage Kodak camera and I am more and more convinced that their ubiquity was well-deserved for many years.

The shutter sounds like it probably fits the 1/40-sec. estimate; the overexposed negatives suggest that’s accurate as well. The lens is much sharper than the Mar-Crest and Imperial Herco cameras, though it’s still blurred and slightly distorted toward the edges. Vignetting isn’t too bad at all.

The film path is quite smooth and the negatives show almost no damage from dragging over the bakelite save for a few ragged spots along the lower edge, which I can find no imperfections to explain. I found no conclusive evidence of light leaks.

Overall, the Baby Brownie Special is deserving of a 4-star rating — it does precisely what it was designed to do, and within the confines of intentional simplicity it excels at what it was designed to do.

This week on Putting a Roll Through: Eight images from my most recent camera acquisition, the Kodak Baby Brownie Special.

Another of my Bakelite Beauties, the Kodak Baby Brownie Special (photos and details on mine) is an upgrade from the standard Baby Brownie.

This roll is the product of another meandering walk to work through Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and all its historic architecture and signage. Sadly, the machine-age (formerly) neon sign on the historic Hotel Newhouse didn’t come out in the 4th photo.

The Baby Brownie Special’s meniscus lens is sharper than the Mar-Crest or the Imperial Herco by a long shot, and demonstrates less vignetting than the Mar-Crest. There is still slight distortion and blurring toward the edges, however.

So you can see in the last image above that while the negatives aren’t nearly as overexposed as those from the Mar-Crest toy camera, they are still in desperate need of some attention.

As with other toy cameras of this age, the shutters are tuned for slower daylight-rated film than what we consider daylight today — probably something in the range of ASA12-32. Result: heavily overexposed negatives.

These were shot using Efke R100 127 film and developed in Kodak HC-110 mixed in the unofficial formula E (47:1) for 7 min at 69°F.

In the photos above, I’ve made no effort to correct slight curl on a couple of frames in scanning, or the dust on the negatives. I adjusted them to black and white in Photoshop using the “Darker” setting, and adjusted the levels to recover some of the contrast. As you can see, with only a little adjustment, some of them actually came out quite nice.

The Mar-Crest is one of the many vintage bakelite toy cameras from a group of manufacturers that Camera-Wiki.org calls The Chicago Cluster — a group of companies, mostly tied to the same address and marketing the same or similar cheap cameras under dozens of brand names, that may or may not have all been the same manufacturer, or a few manufacturers trading molds. Even though this all took place in the mid-20th century, little enough evidence remains that forming a clear picture has been difficult.

The Mar-Crest toy camera is an example of the McKeown Code B style that was the basis for 20 or more variously branded cameras, including the Brenda Starr Cub Reporter and Dick Tracy cameras. The style was patented by Chicago man named Jack Galter in 1938 or 1939, and was known to be available in the Dick Tracy variety in 1947, and still available (though at a deep discount) in 1957. This 15- to 20-year period of availability makes it impossible to date my camera very accurately.

This mold and several similar ones were used for so many cameras it’s impossible to say this was the one that inspired it directly, but Lomography.com‘s Sprocket Rocket looks strikingly similar.

About the camera:

The Mar-Crest toy camera is molded out of black bakelite with a knurled aluminum film advance knob and steel clips on each end holding the back on. The back has no light seals at all, though it does have a raised lip that fits inside the edges of the body of the camera and, apparently, does hold light out surprisingly well.

The lens appears to be plastic, and the shutter is very simple, and operated by a lever directly on the side of it. Around toward the bottom of the lens is a switch to choose between instant and time mode (bulb). The lens housing has a knurled look that makes you think it might unscrew — but it seems glued in place.

A front view of the Mar-Crest toy camera with its original box. This bakelite beauty was $8 at an antique mall. (Daniel J. Schneider)

The casing has a viewfinder molded into the top, which is terribly inaccurate. What you see in the viewfinder is a touch off center and fills only the middle 25% or so of the exposure you make.

Also molded inside the casing is a space (on the far left, seen from the front) for a spare roll of film — an unexpectedly handy and well-thought-out feature in such an inexpensive and poorly made camera.

Another simple snapshot camera, there are no controls for aperture or shutter speed. Based on the overexposure in my test roll, I suspect it’s about f/8.0 and around 1/30th of a second.

The Mar-Crest toy camera appears to have sold for a regular price of $1.98. In this ad from the March 15, 1957 St. Petersburg Times, it was offered at a sale price of $1.29. By July 20th, the same ad in the St. Petersburg Times was clearing them out at just $0.69, leading me to believe they were out-of-production back stock at that point.

About my example:

I found my Mar-Crest at the Brass Armadillo antique mall near Denver, along with a not-too-badly damaged original box, for the bargain price of $8.

It was clean — not even too dusty. The lens and viewfinder, though, were badly covered with dust and other debris. I cleaned them both carefully using cleaner made for plastic LCD monitors and a lint-free swab.

The shutter on mine may not be as fast as it was originally designed to be (or it could be just fine). The photos in the demonstration roll I shot were all grossly overexposed. All were taken in full sunlight (with the sun to my back or side) using ASA100 film. When the camera was originally produced, daylight film was probably DIN12-DIN16 speed, which is the equivalent of a modern ASA12-ASA32 — 2 or 3 stops slower than the slowest (and only) 127 film available today.

The bakelite molding process left a lot of poorly-finished edges internally. This is visible as a few scratches on the negatives — though not nearly as bad as the scratches on the negatives from the Imperial Herco.

The box is worn, but not seriously damaged.

Here's an example of the negatives from the Mar-Crest toy camera. You can see the slight light leak at the bottom, the overlap, the extreme overexposure... Click for more photos. (Daniel J. Schneider)

The lens and film path characteristics are where this camera really loses points. The lens isn’t sharp. Really — it’s not sharp at all. It gets worse toward the edges. Yeah, you can see what you’re looking at — but not clearly.

The film path isn’t straight or flat — at all. As you can see in the first example shot the film clearly wasn’t flat. The edges of the exposure aren’t remotely straight. The film isn’t held tightly against the light box, either. There is considerable leakage between frames.

Speaking of light leaks, you can clearly see in a number of shots a large light leak near the bottom center of some frames. I suspect this is because the steel clips holding the back on don’t really hold it all that tightly (although that doesn’t stop it from being rather difficult to open the camera).

The film position windows on the back of the camera are clearly not quite spot on. I slowly moved the film to one window and then the next, carefully centering the frame number each time. On the negatives, each set of two exposures overlap by about 3/16″ and the sets of two are about 1/4″ apart. I think if the second exposure window (on the left) were about 5/32″ further to the left (as you hold the camera to advance the film), the exposures would be spaced more evenly.

The lens produces considerable vignetting, as well. The vignetting appears a bit off-center in my cropped example images because of the exposure overlap discussed above.

So this camera will resume its place on my wall with the others, but I’m glad a put a roll of film through it.

Up next will probably by the Kodak Baby Brownie Special — a recent acquisition that also uses 127 film.

As I document my camera collection, Putting a Roll Through is going to be a semi-regular feature displaying the rolls of film I run through each functional camera to see how it works.

These images are from my Mar-Crest toy camera (full write up here), and what is most evident is…well, a lot of things. Mostly, it’s just not a very good camera.

To capture them, I just took the camera on a roundabout walk to work through Denver’s Capitol Hill. What you can’t see in the 8th shot on the roll (9th slide above) is the Women’s Press Club building on Logan Street — sadly, it’s so overexposed I couldn’t even save it in Photoshop.

These were shot using Efke R100 127 film and developed in Kodak HC-110 mixed in the unofficial formula E (47:1) for 7 min at 69°F.

Photoshopping included only black and white conversion (I scan in color to preserve nuances) and bringing the black levels up so that, in a few shots, you can actually see what I was looking at.

A view of the Agfa Ansco PB20 Viking with the back open. You can clearly see the inside of the lens and bellows are in sad shape, and the hinge pin has completely rusted through at one end. (Daniel J. Schneider)

The Agfa Ansco PB20 Viking is my first, and so far only, Agfa camera. It’s an Agfa Ansco because prior to World War II and the negative image of Agfa, American camera maker Ansco merged with the German manufacturer for about 15 years. The partnership was dissolved in 1943.

Some details on the camera itself

Internet sources are sparse on the actual history of many Agfa cameras, but it appears that the PB20 series was mostly made around 1940. The less-expensive Readyset was apparently made from 1934-1938. So my educated guess is that this was made between 1934 and 1943.

The Viking was the high-end, top-finish model of the Agfa Ansco PB20 6×9 folding camera series, offering a cloth covering instead of leatherette, a body shutter release, and the f/7.7 Viking lens instead of the f/11 or f/14 lenses on lower models.

It used 620 film () which is loaded into small, removable carriers.

In this front view of the Agfa Ansco PB20 Viking you can see the rust on the edges of the front cover, the handle rings and the folding top viewfinder, and the deteriorating cloth covering. (Daniel J. Schneider)

I bought my Agfa Ansco PB20 Viking at an antique store in Rico, Colorado, on my recent vacation to the Four Corners area for about $20, which is probably more than it’s actually worth. Why? Because it’s functionally hopeless.

It looks like the camera was left folded up and stores outdoors, or in a very damp place. The cloth covering is badly deteriorated, the polished/enameled exterior parts are more rust than camera at this point. One end of the hinge pin on the camera back has rusted clean through. Even the chromed rings on the handle ends are rusting badly.

The bellows is brittle, cracked, and full of holes — probably enough that it’s beyond repair. The shutter functions, but not consistently – it sticks badly 2/3 of the time.

The viewfinder is badly fogged and visibly bent far out of alignment — not so far that the camera won’t close, but clearly not right.

And the film advance knob seems barely functional. And the lens appears to have a bit of mold around the edges.

So yeah — no pictures from this one; it’s a piece for my shelves only. And that’s okay, because my shelves need cameras.

Give me a few more days to run another roll of film through the Mar-Crest camera and I’ll post about it when I have pictures to show.

A front view of the Imperial Herco 620 bakelite snapshot toy camera, and one of my first ventures into product photography. (Daniel J. Schneider)

For me, this is the camera that started my collection. In fact, it’s the first film camera I’ve personally owned outright.

I found it at an antique mall in southeast Denver, sitting in a case with a dozen other toy and vintage cameras. My interest in it, at first, was purely as a decorative object. But after researching the little bakelite beauty a bit, I realized it was a really stellar example of this particular model. The plastic carrying strap is still supple, complete, and shows no signs of age or wear whatsoever.

Here’s what I learned:

The Imperial Herco is just one of many, many varieties of inexpensive bakelite cameras marketed under the Imperial brand by the Herbert George Company, and had several variants including an early Official Girl Scout model.

One thing I noticed about my Herco was the knurled aluminum film advance knob. Most of the examples I’ve found online have a plastic knob, wedge-shaped in cross section, rather than the metal cylinder I’ve got. I learned, but can’t find the site where, that these were the earlier models and I have it in my head that mine was probably manufactured in 1954 or 1955.

My example was extremely clean inside and out, and looks almost as if it were never used. Bits of flash from the bakelite molding process were still evident even in the film path. I carefully trimmed the worst of these off by simply running my thumbnail over the affected edges.

The Herco uses 620 film, which is no longer available (except from Film for Classics, which can be hard to find and expensive). So the solution was the buy 120 film and respool it onto the smaller 620 spools (same film, but 620 spools are much thinner than 120 spools).

A side view of the Imperial Herco 620 bakelite snapshot toy camera, showing the knurled, cylindrical aluminum knob that I believe is indicative of earlier models. (Daniel J. Schneider)

For the test roll I ran through the Herco, I used Kodak T-Max ASA100 film.

Using the Herco is incredibly simple. Two small steel clips hold the back on the camera, and they just swivel to the side allowing you to slide the back off the camera for loading. Spring steel clips hold the ends of the film spools. As with many inexpensive roll film cameras, there’s a simple red window for viewing the frame numbers on the backing paper.

The shutter is a simple lever — you depress it and the shutter fires in snapshot mode. There’s no T or B setting as with many cameras of this ilk.

Respooling the film as described in the link above will move the film relative to the backing paper something like 1/4-inch, which isn’t enough to move the frames of the end of the film or anything like that, I’ve noticed that advancing the film until the frame number on the backing paper is just barely visible helps to keep the frames slightly better aligned with the frame numbers on the film stock, if your film stock has numbers. I suspect this applies to pretty much any 620 camera using respooled film, but so far this is the only one I’ve actually used with my respooled film.

The results aren’t great, but really aren’t bad. In my photos you can see that while the center of the frame is fairly sharp, the edges are distorted — quite a bit. The top seems to distort more than the bottom for some reason, and the distortion consists of rapidly diminishing sharpness, slight vignetting and extreme pincushion distortion. Additionally, the negatives had many slight scratches and several deeper scratches from the inexpensive manufacturing of the film path.

Final note: The telescopic viewfinder seems to show about the center 75% of what winds up on your final frame, so framing tightly will still leave some headroom around the edges of your photo.

Summary: It’s a fun little toy camera that makes superb lomography-type photos and enjoys a good showing in the Flickr Imperial Cameras group.

The second camera I added to my collection, and coming up next, is the Mar-Crest toy camera. Maybe by the time I write it up, I’ll have finished and processed the roll of film in it.

If you’ve enjoyed this installment, look for more as I discuss each of the cameras in my collection and my findings in researching them.

Occupy Denver protesters have occupied two park areas in Denver since September, 2011, including Lincoln Park (the State Capitol’s West Lawn) and Civic Center. They’ve been evicted from their spots twice by Colorado State Patrol troopers and Denver Police officers in riot gear, and more than one of their marches or demonstrations has turned violent. There have been hundreds of arrests, some injuries, at least one case of arson and millions spent on police overtime and park cleanup since the Occupy protests began.

I haven’t made it down to cover every single happening, but I have been at or near the camps for both of the major evictions and several other incidents, including one that lasted only minutes but was dubbed “Occupy the Toilet” by one protester. Initially I covered the protests and their participants with my digital camera, but decided to do some of the work with film. My portraits are an attempt to show a variety of the types of people who seemed to be the most tenacious, showing up day after day or sleeping in Denver’s Civic Center.

These photos were all taken with my Minolta SR-T200 using Ilford Delta 100, and developed in my kitchen. If I add more in the future, they may use different films.

Photoshop processing included: Adjusting exposure with levels to compensate for underdeveloped film (still learning); minor use of Spot Healing Brush to eliminate the worst dust from the scanner bed.

Black and white photographs of St. John’s Cathedral on Washington Street at 14th Avenue in Denver, Colorado. I live not far from the cathedral and walk past it regularly with my dog, and every time I notice subtle nuances I haven’t seen before in its design. Consequently, it is always fun to take more pictures of it. Usually this is done with the dog tugging one way or anything because the churchyard is one of the neighborhood’s best squirrel hangouts.

According to Wikipedia, the cathedral began construction in 1909 and the first services were held in 1911. In 1975 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

These were taken with my Minolta SR-T200 (before it got a CLA, new light seals and some shutter repairs) using Ilford Delta 100 film, and developed in my kitchen using Ilford’s Ilfortec DD-X at 1+4. These pictures were all shot using Sunny 16 rules because the meter was also not functioning before the CLA.

Photoshopping included: Adjusting exposure to compensate for underdeveloped film (still learning); minor use of Spot Healing Brush to eliminate some dust on the scanner bed.

These photos were all taken in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, anchored by Colorado’s iconic gold-domed State Capitol building.

The Capitol’s dome is currently in the beginning stages of a major restoration to repair the aging cast-iron superstructure and re-gild the dome, ensuring that it is once again covered in gold mined in Colorado — over $100,000 worth. When the Capitol Hill neighborhood first began to build up in the late 1800s and early 1900s the curbstones and sidewalks were all made of Colorado-native sandstone, as well. While some have been replaced, much of the original flagstone remains.

Another recognizable feature of the neighborhood is the Capitol Hill Mansion. “A national historically registered 1891 Richardsonian Romanesque Mansion,” according to Denver.org, it re-opened as a well-reviewed bed and breakfast in 1994.

Taken with my Minolta SR-T200 using Ilford Delta 100 film, developed in my kitchen with Ilford’s Ilfotec DD-X developer at 1+4. Taken using Sunny 16 rules before I had the meter on my camera repaired (along with a CLA, new light seals and a shutter tune-up).

Photoshopping included: Adjusting exposure with levels to compensate for underdeveloped film (still learning); minor use of Spot Healing Brush to eliminate the worst dust from the scanner bed.

I acquired the Imperial Herco at an antique mall for $8 in the summer of 2011. Long a fan of old things and already a photographer, I thought of it as a nice piece of brick-a-brack to display on my wall someplace. It’s like a cheap brownie knockoff, but it’s actually a very attractive little camera.

As my interest in film photography (beyond the take-it-to-MotoPhoto variety I knew when I was younger) I decided to test it with a roll of film.

The photo above are mostly just test shots, some from a walk with the dog in Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and some from a drive to Conifer, Colorado, and over Guanella Pass in search of colorful Aspen trees as the turned for fall.

The first things I noticed after developing the film were that the emulsion was deeply scratched throughout the roll, and that the images are more and more distorted as they reach the edge of the frame. That the edges would be out of focus at the edge didn’t surprise me, and with a camera that originally sold for less than $3 (not very expensive even in 1954) even the distortion wasn’t a surprise. The degree of distortion, though, was. The scratches on the negatives are clearly from the cheaply-cast bakelite film path. I noticed several burrs when I first inspected it and was able to smooth them some with my thumbnail.

These shots were taken with Kodak T-Max 100, rerolled from 120 onto spare 620 spools, and developed in Ilford Ilfotec DD-X developer at 1+4.

Photoshopping included: Adjusting exposure with levels to compensate for over-exposed and under-developed film; minor use of Spot Healing Brush to eliminate the worst dust from the scanner bed. I did not attempt to repair the scratches in the negatives.