Wow, Daniel has his grandfather’s Rolleiflex, a truly famous 35mm camera from the last century. Super cool and I said, oh that looks like a Brownie. A quizzical look and I had to explain the Kodak Brownie (which looks superficially similar) was the camera that brought photography to the masses.

This was the original camera that cost $1 in 1888 and which was originally targeted at kids. Brownie was a popular character at the time which were names for fairies or sprites. Variants of it sold for nearly 100 years and it was a box camera originally, you just opened it and it exposed the film directly.

Later version of course had lenses and they moved from 117mm to 120mm fim and there is an entire list of every Brownie every made on the web of course.

My first Camera

This all reminds me of the first camera that I can remember owning. My Dad loved cameras and the first one I used was the Minolta SRT-101, but my own camera was something much more humble, it used a cartridge called the 126mm. I don’t think it was a Kodak Instamatic, but in looking at the web, it was probably some clone, it had a yellow cartridge to hide the film and I still remember taking my first selfie with the camera on the bed and me out of focus. I guess my technique was memorable because my brother Pete did the same thing. I don’t have my shot anymore, but do have his.