Topic: What camera could that have been?

[Nicole BM]

I have a collection of photos from the late 60's and early 70's that are 8cm x 8cm square and the album even has square, fitting plastic pages (6 squares a page) with "Porst Fix" shown on the edge of the pages. I love these old photos, so chaotic, natural and imperfect, just the way life is. Now I'm wondering what camera could've been used to produce these small prints. Nothing like old originals I reckon.

[moominsean]

i think a lot of those square snaps with the border from that era were 126 shots. you could still order photos with a border until about 6 year ago... now i haven't seen it as an option.

[gothamtomato]

I'm thinking that was shot on 126 film. Before 110 film came along, offerign smaller cameras, 126 cameras were the most popular amateur cameras.

I had a little Kodak snapshot camera that used 126 film. The film was in a fully enclosed cartridge that dropped in. You didn't have to thread it like a 35 mm roll. I actually still have mine, but they stopped making that film years ago.

[Nicole BM]

Thank you for writing in. It's a shame we can't get these anymore, they are unique. Hmmm....... thinking cap is on.

[cmdrray]

You can still get 126 film- check www.frugalphotographer.com. They carry a ISO 200 color print
film made in Italy called Solaris. Blue Moon Camera here in Portland might have it, too
(www.bluemooncamera.com)

[Heather]

You can get Instamatic cameras off of ebay quite easily too. No one wants them because of the limited film availablity.

The really odd thing about the film, besides the sprocket holes on one side and the square format, is that the film came with pre-exposed borders. I found an old one in my husband's family junk drawer and developed it as B&W. It's quite odd because the image is exposed over the vertical pre-exposed borders. Made it a bit odd to scan and work with.
You can see the pre-exposed border on this one easily http://www.stargazy.org/photos/c-22retouchedmanip/tn/05original.jpg.html
The whole set http://www.stargazy.org/photos/c-22retouchedmanip/  It wasn't the best quality or anything but we think it was taken in 1979/1980 and it's c-22 which allegedly has a darker base than c-41 even. That digi stuff ended up being my simple little Christmas present to my inlaws last year, along with some prints from a random roll of B&W 127 film we found in the junk drawer which no one in the family fesses up to having a 127 camera!  Though it was interesting to watch them recognise people that I could hardly make out through double exposures...

[moominsean]

i don't think it's preexposed borders as much as it is overlapping shots...or maybe not...i can't tell. pre-exposed crop marks?

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[Heather]

Your's looks a bit odd. Mine are properly spaced but you can see there is a border clearly on your film too. I'm fairly sure I've read or chatted with PhotoEngineer on APUG about it and he mentioned they had to compensate for the pre-exposed borders using up more chemicals or something in development in bigger processors.