Category Archives: photography

Seeing the world through my viewfinder.

photography 2 Comments

Kodak Brownie Starmite

A couple of days ago, my cubemate James told me that he and his wife had found a couple of old cameras while they were cleaning their house. Since he knew I collect old cameras, he saved them both from the landfill and brought them in to work yesterday for me to check out. One was a simple late-70s / early-80s Instamatic 110 camera, which I dismissed as passé.

The second camera, though, piqued my interest.

It was a Kodak Brownie Starmite camera from the early 1960s (an “instamatic” of sorts itself, as it has no adjustable settings). I gladly took it off of James’s hands, and offered him five bucks for it, which he refused. I just so happened to have a roll of 127 film leftover in the freezer from testing the Brownie Bullet a couple of years back, so I brought the camera home, cleaned it off, and loaded it up, then brought it to work today to test it out during my lunchtime walk.

The research I did online said that the Starmite has an aperture of f/11 and a fixed focus at infinity. That basically means that I’m limited to sunny landscapes, so today’s overcast weather didn’t bode well. I went ahead and took the standard test shots, though: gazebo, telephone pole, path. I’ll take similar or identical pictures in a day or two, when it’s sunnier out, and we’ll see how the camera (and film) reacts to different levels of light.

Note to self: This time, when I’m done with the roll, I’m going to have individual prints made, rather than a contact/proof sheet. The proof sheet for the Brownie Bullet didn’t turn out so good. Maybe I’ll do some searching for a different place to process, too… but I’m not really dissatisfied with Main Photo. I’d just like to find someplace a little closer to the Midwest, for some quicker turnaround.