Kodak Instamatic: 50 Years old, 50M plus sold!

[Tom hicks]

Tom...just a bit curious..are those bikes Shwinn's ?

Yes, we had just got back from the Bike Mart. Varsity 10 speed $68.00 plus tax. I hated those fenders but my dad said I had to have them . They lasted about a week before I took them off. He wasn't pleased. I was 11 years old.

 

[Tom hicks]

It is such a shame to see the excellent lens on a 104 go to waste, so I mounted one to fit a IIIf or my BessaR:

Very nice John . Love the mood in this one

 

[sepiareverb]

Is there any current use for the fine Schneider lenses used with the Instamatic Reflex?

I had this fine Schneider lens from the 500 adapted to M mount. Tiny as can be. I was shooting with a 500 a bit in the fall and was blown away by this little lens.

Not my image of the lens, but one can see it here.

 

[charjohncarter]

Thanks Tom, really just a high quality lens.

 

[Doug]

Jeez, fifty years?? I was using a Kodak Brownie Super 27 in 1963... A couple years later I was working part-time in a camera shop, and there was a new K-Mart in town. K-Mart had a promotion with Instamatics priced below the shop's wholesale, so the boss sent me over there to buy a bunch of them!

 

[oftheherd]

A Kodak instamatic actually got me back into 35mm SLR photography. I was handed one for a crime scene shortly after my arrival in Korea. It may have been good for a lot of things, but close-up crime scene photography wasn't one of them. At least not the model I was given. I don't recall what model it was.

I bought 126 from somebody a couple or three years ago and put it in my film reefer. I still havn't used it. I don't have time to take near the photos I want, and wouldn't want to spend time with the Instamatic I have somewhere around the house.

But in its day, it was a popular camera that delivered results many people were quite pleased with.

 

[Crazy Fedya]

30mm Schneider lens

30mm Schneider lens

I had this fine Schneider lens from the 500 adapted to M mount. Tiny as can be. I was shooting with a 500 a bit in the fall and was blown away by this little lens.

How is the coverage on 24x36? Are corners very soft or passable?

 

[nikon_sam]

I used one in my high school photo class...thought it was the greatest thing ever...until I saw some negs from our class teacher's aide who was using a Nikon F...

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Still have mine, i think it was my second camera the Diana or something similar was my first.

That's the camera my parents had and I grew up with, until my mother, for some odd reason, decided we needed a better one, so we got a Canon EX Auto SLR.

By then I had had one for about two years. 🙂 And my rolls didn't last long either (of course, I wasn't paying for developent).

 

[NY_Dan]

Here's a photo from my Blurb book IF YOU SEE SOMETHING -- all photos taken with a 1964 or so Kodak Instamatic:

http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/457197-if-you-see-something

 

[jsrockit]

I'm not sure how I missed this thread, but thanks for the articles and stuff. My first camera as well.

 

[hepcat]

I missed this the first time around too! My first camera was an Instamatic 124, the "new and improved" 104 before the Magic Cube cameras. Here's a shot of the Instamatic case of the camera store that I managed in January or February of 1974. By then, though, 110 was all the rage. I was digging through my old transparencies and found three that I took of my "store" (it was actually the camera department in a large department store.)

 

[jsrockit]

That's great hepcat!

 

[dcsang]

The instimatic was my first camera - given to me by my parents back in the early/mid 70's - I had shown interest in photography and they provided me with one so that I can "take photos like dad" 🙂

Fond memories of that camera and it's flash bulbs and the "ouch ouch hot !!" feeling when trying to remove them before letting them cool down 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Cheers,
Dave

 

[B-9]

Kodak Instamatic X35, 50 yr Anniversary by N&N Fine Photographic, on Flickr

Part of my Kodak Display, Genuine Ikelite Housing, Kodak X-35.

 

[hepcat]

And for those of you who are real 126 film aficionados, who can forget the Instamatic Reflex? They were actually a pretty darn good camera. They just didn't find much of a target market. Folks who wanted 126 cameras wanted a cheap snapshot camera. Folks who wanted SLRs went for a 35mm.

 

[sepiareverb]

Not my image of the lens, but one can see it here.

How is the coverage on 24x36? Are corners very soft or passable?

The corners are soft, though not much worse than a 50/1.4 V1. They improve a bunch as it is stopped down, but even at 16 are not perfect all the way out. Quite passable.

Beautiful tonality on the Monochrom:
L5607156 by Rob't McCann, on Flickr

There are some example images on my Flickr through the lens at 2.8 and 16.

 

[someonenameddavid]

What photographers fail to understand about 126 is that it revolutionized photofinishing. 126 machines were automated and the frames preprinted on the negative. It put paid to half frame. The great yellow god had a good run, but like many emperors couldn't see the writing on the wall

 

[Timmyjoe]

In the mid-1960's my Mom bought an Instamatic 104 and didn't really like it, so she gave it to my older brother. I was so jealous.

 

[CameraQuest]

Modern Photography did a lens test of all the Instamatic cameras when they first came out, Instamatic 100 to Instamatic 800.

The 500 had by far the sharpest lens of all the fixed lens Instamatics.
Not even the higher priced 800 was even close!