Category Archives: test rolls

new-to-me film cameras

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Cosina CX-2 Test Roll

Cosina CX-2

I bought my Cosina CX-2 on eBay last spring for under $25 shipped. I’d been waiting for a decently priced one, especially since I overpaid through the nose for my Lomo LC-A back in 2004, and the Cosina CX-2 was purported to the THE camera that the LC-A was modeled from. I got this particular camera for a decent price — mostly because the seller was upfront that it needed new light seals.

Honestly, it’s not that bad. My Olympus XA has seals that don’t look much better, so I figured I’d take it out for a spin without doing any seal replacement (mostly because I’m still inexperienced at replacing light seals).

I was on the fence about the seals for a while, though, so I didn’t take the camera out for a test drive until September. I took the CX-2 for a walk to the new Middlegrounds Metropark in downtown Toledo, then finished off the roll that weekend.

Cosina CX-2 Test

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Mugging Out at the Playground

Cosina CX-2 Test
[Taken 1 October 2016]

This was the last frame from the maiden voyage of the Cosina CX-2, precursor to the Lomo LC-A. Expect an actual in-depth review sometime soon, but the tl;dr version is that Lomo did a pretty good job of copying this camera, for the most part, but the Cosina feels a bit more reliable.

I haven’t taken my Lomo for a spin for a good seven years or so, mainly because if I want a compact film camera that can be fully automatic, I’ll just take the Olympus XA — and I rarely want that high-contrast “Lomo” look about my photos these days. The Cosina, though… it has all the charm of my LC-A with none of the fuss. It might get some time to shine.

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The Official Boy Scout 3-Way Camera

boys life ad for $6.95

I found the Official Boy Scout 3-Way Camera at the local antique mall back in late March — I probably shouldn’t have paid $14.50 plus tax for it, but I did. Not the entire kit, as advertised above in the December 1959 issue of Boys Life, but just the camera.

And it still had film in it!

multiple exposure

I finished the roll of film in the camera with my son — alas, the photo above, taken in the antique mall, was the only “found” photo that came out. The photos we took at home on the found roll were actually fairly salvageable with only minor digital tweaks.

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Kodak Brownie Fiesta R4

Me with my Brownie FiestaI purchased the Kodak Brownie Fiesta R4 at an antique mall last July for $8.30 (discounted from $10). Once spring rolled around and I found myself looking for a camera to take out, I loaded it up with expired (2014) Bluefire Murano film, ISO 160.

A quick check of brownie-camera.com told me that the exposure is fixed at 1/40 sec @ f/11, so I knew to keep this bad boy very, very still. In the end, though, I didn’t see any discernible difference between the shots where I braced the camera against a fence post or railing and the shots I handheld.

I’m really not sure why I continue to collect fixed-focus Brownie cameras. So many of them end up being reliable snapshot cameras — which is what they were designed to be — and nothing more. (See also: Brownie Reflex 20, Brownie Starmite) This one is no exception. It has a minor light leak at the bottom of the frame, but apart from that, the exposures (on a sunny day) were crisp and spot-on.

The Oliver House

Danger: Construction Site No Trespassing

I posted the entire roll to Flickr, but the long and short of it is that I’m not enamored with this camera. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t have the je ne sais quoi I require for a camera to go into regular rotation. I’ll probably come back to it later with a roll of black and white and try again, but not for some time. For now, it’s going to sit on the shelf with my other Brownies.