Kodachrome

Doesn't this make you want to take it in your hand and capture something?  Isn't there something fundamentally appealing about its shape, its color, the function for which it was designed?  This vintage Kodak Brownie is for sale on Etsy, so if it makes you happy, too, you might go pick it up.  The price is very reasonable. All the others you see in this blog are also from Etsy, too.  If you click their images, you should be able to go to their listing, I think....

These vintage cameras are very cheap right now, most of them costing less than $25, and I'm thinking of collecting a few just for the beauty of them.  I love vintage items, love the stories that cling to them, and cameras somehow seem as though they might have some of the happiest stories to tell, I think.  Maybe it's all the trips and birthdays, weddings and holidays they've seen....  Now, though, they seem a little sad to me sitting and waiting to be purchased, sort of like something waiting to be rescued and reclaimed, slightly scuffed around the edges, but still waiting with that cheerful smile to be picked up again.

So many of them have been abandoned not because they no longer work but because they've become victims of the great march of technology.  While many of them are still functional, the film they were made to use no longer exists.  In fact, the film most of the cameras that use it were designed to use is becoming a historical notation instead of a part of daily life.

I recently upgraded my camera equipment from a film body Nikon to a digital one (which you know if you read this blog very much).  That change was partially one I made because of the ease of dealing with digital images, but it was in no small degree one that was increasingly necessary.  Film is getting hard to find.

It has always been hard to deal with.  Whenever images were shot, I, a person with less control of my camera than I should have, always had to pray that the shot was there.  With the digital, I can more or less know.   Getting the film to the processor and then remembering to pick it up was also a hassle.  Now, I can also be my own photo studio for prints that aren't archival, and that's a wonderful thing, too, since the vast majority of what I do with my photos are use them in digital media anyway.

The change is universal.  Everywhere that film once reigned is slowly becoming digital.  I noticed that even things like x-ray at hospitals and in dentistry that used to produce large film negatives have gone to all digital images instead.  For them, I suppose digital is probably instant, modifiable, electronically archiveable and shareable in a way that hard copy film is not.  I think that is largely good.

And yet, I couldn't help but feel a little sad when I saw the NPR article about the end of Kodak's production of the famous slide film Kodachrome.  It was inevitable with so many people, so many professional photographers even, using only digital cameras.  This is just another step toward an altogether filmless world.  There are already so many little orphans out there like the cameras I'm showing here that no longer have a place as technology advances.  Indeed, my beloved F80 lies with its body cap attached, its strap wrapped neatly, in the bottom of its gear bag, another more recent casualty of the same process.  I guess time has to march on, but it makes me a little sad and nostalgic all the same.  I think a collection of these bright curving cameras would be a nice way to commemorate what's gone before, repurpose and honor them, give them a way to continue to share all those smiles they captured during their years of useful service.