10 ms·

The Kodak Disc Camera

65 points by nickt 4y ago

dannyw 4y ago
Tangential Ask HN: For someone looking to get into film photography for the first time, what camera would you recommend? I prefer something as mechanical as possible (less electronics the better!), but a working light meter might be helpful.
- greggeter 4y ago
  Any Nikon from the 90s with a focus drive motor. Put it in manual and have a ball. https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n55.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n55.htm
- frostburg 4y ago
  Olympus OM-1 (or OM-1n) if you can stand using silver oxide batteries for the light meter. There are many other great fully mechanical options but they can be somewhat expensive or have issues with finding lenses. The OM-2n is also great but the shutter requires a working battery and it's actually a very complex camera internally (it does real-time aperture priority metering by measuring the light reflected by the film surface while the shutter is open, if you want it to). A Nikkormat FT3 or Nikon FM would also be good choices, but I like the compactness of the Olympus.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah, watch out for battery requirements. Canon A-1, AE-1, F-1 are also reasonable choices. (Basically any FD lens system camera.) The trick is probably finding something that is in decent shape but not "collectible" shape. Looking through KEH's catalog is probably a good start.
    - frostburg 4y ago
      The issue there is that the once very affordable FD lenses are now popular among filmmakers for rehousing, which makes them a lot less affordable. Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper.
      - skhr0680 4y ago
        > Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper No it’s not! Pre-Ai Nikon lenses are also made out of toxic metal that will break modern cameras!
        frostburg 4y ago
        No, they'll break modern cameras due to their shape, but that's why I mentioned the FT3 and FM.
- 12xo 4y ago
  Nikon FM2. The best beginner SLR ever made. Add a 85mm 1.4 or a 110mm and a 35mm 1.4 lens and you're on your way.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I don't really follow the used market that much, but I'm thinking the is the best answer if you've got a good budget to work with and the other post saying the Pentax K1000 is better if you don't. One potential advantage is the ability to use old Nikon lenses on newer digital cameras, but that's of limited utility when trying to use old manual focus lenses on modern bodies that aren't really designed for them.
    - frostburg 4y ago
      The manual lenses are actually better on modern mirrorless cameras than on older dslr ones, because those had viewfinders that made focusing manually rather hard, while the mirrorless bodies have good focus aids.
- joblessjunkie 4y ago
  There are many correct answers here, but I recommend the Pentax K1000. It is possibly the world's #1 most-manufactured camera, and was the standard camera for beginner photography classes throughout the 80s and 90s. There are vendors on eBay that specialize in this camera and have literally 100s of cameras in stock. Early models are all-metal, while later ones incorporate some plastic, but are consequently lighter. At this age, I wouldn't worry about the reliability difference of the two, and simply plan to replace the body if it fails. The Pentax K-mount has a lot of cheap, good glass. The 50/1.8 is standard and fabulous, the 28/2.8 and 135/4 are also amazing and can be had for under $50. The camera is entirely manual, with no autofocus or autoexposure available. Optionally, you can put a button cell battery in it to power a simple exposure meter, visible as a needle indicator in the viewfinder. I've been shooting these for 40 years, so I'm a bit biased, but I do recommend them just for their ubiquity and cheap replaceability.
  - musictubes 4y ago
    The K1000 and the Canon AE-1 are some of the only model names that people still recognize. They were both basic cameras when new. Ironically, they are now frequently more expensive than better cameras from the same makers. The name recognition has driven search. I now recommend a Pentax MX, the same operation of a K1000 but better in every way. It was a more upscale all mechanical camera from Pentax. If you want a Canon, go for an Fb to Ftb for mechanical cameras or an A1 if you want more automated exposure options. The best deals are probably the autofocus cameras from the 90s. With a little looking around you can probably find a Minolta XtSI with a 50mm lens for $50 or less. It is small and the lens, like all 50mm, is great. It also has a built in flash and a variety of of auto modes to simplify picture taking. Yes, they are cheap, plastic cameras that will not last a very long time. But you can get then for so cheap it doesn't really matter. The lenses tend to last longer. You can get similar deals on other brands too. Pentax autofocus cameras are super cheap but you can find Canon Rebels by the truckload as well as many Nikon (the N/F80 is my favorite plastic fantastic from them).
- cpsns 4y ago
  Literally almost any working camera will be fine, just pick one you like and have at it. As a beginner your photos aren't going to be amazing, so you won't gain much from some crazy expensive/fancy camera, nor do you even know if you'll like working with film. You don't even need a light meter really (though they are very helpful), basic rules like sunny-16 will go along way and will help teach you how to judge exposure. 1950-60s rangefinders can be a fun place to start. They've got everything you need, nothing you don't, are full mechanical, and often very cheap. The most important thing is to get out, learn how film behaves and to learn how to take good photos. Don't get caught in the trap a lot of beginners do worrying about gear to the point they focus on that more than actually using it.
- ruined 4y ago
  holga or diana. it's a plastic box with a shutter. you will be forced to learn and get creative.
  - frostburg 4y ago
    Those are bad in general and also specifically bad for learning since the results aren't repeatable.
- mc32 4y ago
  I think the EOS Rebels. Of course you could go back to all mechanical; but this is a decent compromise.
  - frostburg 4y ago
    No EOS camera is mechanical because they all use EF lenses with electronic aperture control, I don't think that's what the parent post asks for.
    - mc32 4y ago
      I interpreted it as film. For mechanical the old Pentax K-1000 is a nice entry option.
- hef19898 4y ago
  I would recommend two cameras, both Nikon since I'm a Nikon guy since my dad handed me his F4 when I was 12 or so. First is a FA, fully mechanical and a nice camera. Not sure about availability so. The second, and already sporting stuff you also find on modern DSLRs, is a Nikon F4. At least over here more or less available, industructible (even half submerged in rain water pictures are great and the camera did not suffer). Benefit of both is that they work with every F-mount lense Nikon ever made. Not sure about the latest G series without aperture rings, could be the F4 accepts those. And those lenses, if you get the good ones, all work great on Nikon's DSLRs up to the recent D780 and D850. And those lenses are available cheap used since everybody goes mirrorless. With a F4 and a decent set of lenses it is easy to go didgital on a budget, e.g. with a used good condition D700. Full format, feels a lot like a F4, both are professional bodies, and not too expensive. Invest the difference to mirrorless into travelling to nice places where you can take nice pictures. Oh, and using film helps improve your photography, if a picture takes time and money to develop you are much more concious about what you shoot. Damn, now I'm motivated to break out the afore mentioned F4 again and some B+W film... Edit: If you can get your hands on a Canon EOS1 your good too. It's Canon's F4 equivalant and Canon lenses are great. Canon does have less lens downward conpatability so. Nikon cameras are hefty, you feel what you handle, Canons are lighter and feel, well, not flimsy in comparison but you get the drift. I like hefty, solid cameras, others don't, so ouck your poison.
- xdennis 4y ago
  If you just want to try, get a good Zeiss Ikon Contina. It's the cheapest camera (20-30 dollars for a good model) of a great quality that I have. Fully mechanic, no battery.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  I prefer the older TLR (twin-lens reflex) cameras — the "box cameras". They take amazing photos (I think). Most larger cities will still have a camera shop selling/processing 120 film. (Also easy to scan the negatives on a flat-bed scanner rather than having to make prints.) TLR's can be had fairly inexpensively on eBay (as long as you're not insisting on getting a Hassleblad or a Rollieflex, for example). Yashica's are still affordable and take excellent photos. Most models are purely mechanical — not even an exposure meter. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=yashica+120&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...
- jeffal 4y ago
  I just picked up a Nikon N80 off ebay for $40. Early 2000s camera so will shoot in full auto but also manual mode. Ironically can be had cheaper than the earlier semi-auto Nikons.
- ninjin 4y ago
  There are a lot of factors to consider and also subjective preferences. But I agree that a light metre is helpful, although one should remember that you can get a stand-alone one. There are even ones that fit in the hot shoe [1]! [1]: https://cameraquest.com/voivcmet2.htm https://cameraquest.com/voivcmet2.htm As for camera suggestions, this is where it gets difficult and I know that I did not find the “right” camera for me right away. Initially I shot a digital SLR for about half a decade and while I got better as a photographer, I could never love the device itself and how it “made” me shoot. Got into film with a fairly small 50s Leica that I inherited, moved its 1949 Summitar 50mm lens over to a Bessa R2 after about a year because it has a built-in light metre, had fun with an original (fairly cheap as well!) Olympus XA, and these days I can afford Zeiss glass and a Zeiss Ikon ZM to match. But it sure was a journey and I feel I became a much better digital shooter thanks to it. So, um… Recommendations? I like small cameras – preferably rangefinders – as they are easy to carry and forces me to work within the compromises they make in terms of flexibility for a given situation. If it was ten years ago, I would have recommended any of the Bessas (produced this millennia, built like tanks, and nearly purely mechanical) with a 50mm or 35mm cheap lens, but Cosina has either stopped or lowered production to a degree where you will struggle to find one at a reasonable price these days. If you like wide angles (I do not really, as I struggle with anything below 40mm for unknown reasons) there are plenty of fairly cheap consumer and prosumer cameras from the 80s and onward with built-in light metres. My original Olympus XA was cheap and plastic-y as all hell, but oh boy was it small and could pack a punch with some good black and white film (straight from the scanner on good old Neopan 400 [2]). Sadly, if you want a 50mm on such a camera you need to go into the 60s and 70s, where the electronics easily become a bit more iffy. If you are willing to largely forego manual focus, there is also a whole range of cameras like the Fuji Klasse W, Yashica T5, etc. Just beware that some of these goes for crazy amounts of money these days and they are of course packed with electronics. [2]: https://0x0.st/opC5.jpg https://0x0.st/opC5.jpg With all my rambling, I guess in conclusion what I am trying to say is that you perhaps should consider what you already know about yourself and your shooting preferences and go for what is affordable enough to be “a toy” to play around with to get your bearings towards “the right gear”. At least that is how I finally ended up loving the process of shooting both film and digital.
- iNerdier 4y ago
  Depending on budget, A Nikon FM or FM2 for a fully mechanical camera with a light meter. A Nikon F301 for an overlooked, very cheap but still really good camera. The Canon A/AE-1 and Pentax K1000 get brought up a lot and are now surprisingly expensive for what they are, there are much better cameras out there for less but that don’t have their name brought up as much. This is a huge rabbit hole to go down with how many cameras got made but if in doubt seek out someone in person and try to use one before you buy it!
jandrese 4y ago
Company attempts to transition customers to a proprietary product but fails. There is a lot of upside for Kodak with this product, but not so much for the consumer, especially at the price point for the camera. Instamatic already existed and covered the same use cases. The only "problem" is that Instamatic was going off patent so anybody would be able to make the film.
- ghaff 4y ago
  I'm not sure what the sales numbers were for the 110 film Instamatics but it was also the case that anything that used film that was much less than a 35mm frame in area was fairly compromised in terms of quality--especially when combined with other camera components that were low cost.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    Yeah, that was my take. Put a bunch of tiny 110 frames around in a wheel pattern and add a plastic lens (I'm guessing here) and what do you think you're going to get? Even 35mm was marginal in quality (he says from his spoiled-by-modern-digital-photography future). I went back to film and tried a nice Nikon F3 with a great lens. Photos were okay. Absolutely wowed though when I started experimenting with 120 (medium format) film cameras.
    - paulmd 4y ago
      > Even 35mm was marginal in quality 35mm is great up to an 8x10 print. It'll do 11x14 if you don't stand too close. It's 30mp+ of optical resolution. The thing to remember is that at the time, nobody was scanning, they were doing optical enlargements directly onto printer paper, with 6-element macro-optimized process lenses. That's a much higher-quality optical path than you get out of almost any scanner - drum scans and high-end CCD scans (flextight or similar) can get there but even midrange CCD film scanners struggle with 35mm and your average flatbed photo scanner doesn't stand a chance. Nowadays digital has entirely displaced this flow - even at a photo lab you will most likely get prints made from scans. And they're much lower quality than contemporary prints would have been. If they're B+W, try wet-printing those 35mm negatives sometime. Find a local college darkroom and get someone to walk you through split-printing on variable-contrast paper on one or two of your photos. You'll see. https://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/split-filter-printing.html https://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/split-filter-printing... https://www.35mmc.com/27/04/2020/split-grade-printing-darkroom-technique-part-4-by-sroyon-mukherjee/ https://www.35mmc.com/27/04/2020/split-grade-printing-darkro... But yeah medium format is incredibly easy to produce usable scans, by comparison. With top-end gear you can get just as much resolution off a MF negative as 35mm - you can do optical enlargement to several feet or even a yard+ on the long edge. But it's way way easier to get something usable for a 8x10 print or something off a MF negative than it is 35mm.
yuppiepuppie 4y ago
Holy cow! That article was unreadable on mobile with all the ads.
- intrasight 4y ago
  I read HN comments before reading articles. So I got an extra good laugh when I read that article!
- riffic 4y ago
  use "reader" mode if it exists in your mobile browser.
plg 4y ago
We had one of these when I was a kid... took it on holiday to Maui one winter. Super fun and easy to carry around everywhere. Only problem was, photos were absolutely terrible. Grain was incredibly large, no detail. I guess because the actual negative was so small. Never used it again.
- quercusa 4y ago
  But, but: "HR film can be over or underexposed several stops and still produce acceptable prints." I worked in a one-hour photo lab. Disc photos always looked like crap. If you couldn't get a decent photo with the light in Maui, there was no hope.
intrasight 4y ago
Story I've shared on HN in the past. In the summer of '83, I did an internship at Kodak. I worked at the Elmgrove facility where the disc cameras were made. Early in my stint, I got a plant tour of the building where those cameras were made. The factory was going full bore to keep up with demand. I was in awe of the factory and the level of automation and the sheer size of the machines! There were 18,000 people at that one Kodak facility. Start and end time were staggered in five minute increments to manage car flow. To think at the time that just five years later it would all come to a rather quick end was unthinkable.
- intrasight 4y ago
  And to add: I've often contemplated an alternative history where Kodak had the foresight to invest those hundreds of millions into digital photograph.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Certainly there was resistance to digital photography within Kodak. But they did some work with digital very early on and PhotoCD was another effort to get into the transition from film to digital. In any case, the early 80s was way too early for consumer digital photography to be practical. But what would Kodak really have brought to digital--especially at the scale to replace their consumables business? After all, Kodak once owned a full chemical company (that they spun off at some point) to provide them with their chemical needs. They didn't have much in the way of semiconductor expertise. Their network of dealers could have (and actually did) provide some ability for consumers to print digital photos early on. It's not like Kodak was making anything other than cameras like this when digital came in. Fujifilm did better with the transition to digital by leveraging their emulsion and chemical expertise. But they still had a rough time of it and were a much smaller company.
    - shuntress 4y ago
      The point is that Kodak was so huge and had such a big head start it didn't matter that they had no direct experience with semiconductors. Decision makers at kodak should have been able to leverage their considerable resources to gain market share with the new technology that would eventually replace their main product. All things considered, they did a pretty good job of scaling down and staying alive. But it's a classic example of "My salary depends on not understanding it"
js2 4y ago
> The Kodak Disc camera was introduced with great fanfare in 1982. The new cameras were lightweight, foolproof (with auto-exposure and built-in flash), affordable, and used a brand new kind of film cartridge. My dad owned a darkroom/photoshop/one-hour lab for about 30 years starting in the 70s. I worked for him for about 5 of those years centered around highschool. There is absolutely no such thing as a foolproof camera. You would not believe all the ways people can screw up even the most "foolproof" of designs. As just one example: with a traditional 35 mm camera, the film unspools from its lightproof cartridge onto a take-up spool in the camera. When you reach the end of of the roll, you press a button on the camera to release a clutch, then you turn a knob to rewind the film back into its cartridge before opening the camera back and removing the film. https://filtergrade.com/load-film-35mm-camera/ https://filtergrade.com/load-film-35mm-camera/ One obvious and easy to make error is accidentally opening the camera back before rewinding the film, usually ruining ("fogging") all the pictures you shot. :-( But what you wouldn't guess someone would be able to do is to rewind the film without releasing the clutch. Doing so requires a large amount of force because you're tearing the sprockets off the side of the film where it travels over the gear that's normally used to advance the film. Any yet, this is something I saw more than one time. Customers would never admit to doing this, but I mean, come on, we'd open the cartridge to remove the film for development and the sides would have been torn off and there's only one way this happens. Then there's the questions... no, dropping the exposed film did not blur the images.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  Did you ever see eye-raising photos from customers like nudes or even crimes?
  - js2 4y ago
    Mostly people take mundane, boring and poorly shot photos. When they go on vacation they take pictures of the same landmarks and in the same ways. I probably printed[1] the Leaning Tower of Pisa approximately 8 million times. Everyone thinks they are clever posing so that it appears they are holding it in the palm of their hand. And while people also take pictures of other people naked, those also tend to be mundane, boring, and poorly shot. So yes, I printed nudes, but rarely were they notable enough to cause me to raise my eyebrow at them. I don't recall ever printing photos of criminal behavior. [1] The one-hour lab equipment we had was semi-automated. The printing machine was about the size of three refrigerators side-by-side. There was a console/desk at one end that I would sit at which had the projection bulb underneath shining up through a small hole over which I'd place each negative one after the next. The machine had a computer which assumed the colors and exposure in each photo averaged out to an 18% grey image. Looking at the negative, I'd have to punch in offsets: e.g. I'd recognize the image has a lot of sky, or a lot of green foliage, or it's at the beach, etc, or it was over or under exposed, so I'd add "+3 blue" or '+2 green", or whatever I thought was needed to offset from 18% grey, then punch "go". The machine would then expose the negative onto the photo paper above which was on a 4" wide by 1000 foot roll. So it would expose 4" x 6" above, then it would feed the exposed paper into tanks filled with the chemistry to develop the paper. About 12 minutes later (as I recall...) the photos I'd previously exposed would pop out of the machine. Another employee, or me if it wasn't too busy, would then do quality control. I was pretty good, but some photos I would have misidentified so we'd have to sometimes re-print a few. After we were satisfied with the quality, the photos would all go into a paper envelope and we'd cut the negative roll down from 12, 24, or 36 images into strips of 4 images. Those would go into plastic sleeves and get inserted into the same paper envelope with the photos. I never really thought about it before, but I guess I've traveled vicariously all over the world through other people's photos. I don't think we ever thought twice about privacy and I don't think our customers did then either. Occasionally someone might mention there were nudes when dropping off a roll, but mostly not. I vaguely recall we had a customer with a mistress and he would use a different name when dropping off photos that included the mistress because his wife would sometimes come in to pick up the family photos. Okay, one more: a guy who had a new girlfriend every few months and somehow he'd always get his girlfriends to flash the camera. It was amusing because we'd see he had a new girlfriend and knew it would be just a few weeks before he'd have a photo of her flashing her breasts for him. It's been more than 30 years, but those are two I recall.
Lio 4y ago
I had one of these as a kid. I think it was the basic 3100 with the gold front. From memory the major problem for me was not the picture quality or an lack of features on the camera. It was the cost of film, developing and that it only had a few exposures per disk. It was just too expensive to run compared to a 35mm camera. A few years later the disposable 35mm cameras came out and that just killed it completely.
sunpazed 4y ago
Our family camera was a Kodak Disc Camera. The crappy grainy quality was offset by the speed and convenience of swapping discs. Lots of family moments would have been forgotten, so the trade-off was worth it. Only problem was price (more expensive to buy and process), and availability (hard to find disc film in a country town).
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Strange how, having become curator for the family photos going back many generations, I have seen the quality of the photos fall off over the decades. Peak home-photography appears to be around the 1930's or 1940s. Photos get worse when color comes along, worse still when Polaroids came along. Growing up we had the Kodak Instamatics — perhaps the worst of the lot?
mikotodomo 4y ago
Wow, I didn't know cameras were portable and affordable in the '80s. I thought this only started after the 2000s.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
> The suggested list price is $67.95. That's $182 in 2020 dollars for the base model camera. Not exactly budget minded for something competing against 110 cameras.
icedchai 4y ago
I remember getting one of these for Christmas when I was a kid, back in the 80's. I think it was a 4000 model? I had completely forgotten about these.
Xx25 4y ago
Ah! I read it as disk camera, and thought Kodak had cameras with hard disks for storage. For a brief time in the 2000s that may not have been such a bad idea.
DoubleGlazing 4y ago
I had a few disc cameras in the 80s. My mother bought them for me because they were cheap and easy to use. It was a great concept in theory, but as the articles states the picture quality was terrible. Every picture I took was a little bit blurry with over exposed colours and that was after taking them to a processor who had the right equipment. I also tried various different brands and qualities of film, all with the same result. I have about 80 disc negatives in a cupboard somewhere. I wanted to scan them to JPG, but I couldn't find a DIY scanner that accepts the format without having to cut the frames from the disc and put them in to a 35mm slide mount. There are a few companies that have the means to scan them, but they are pricey - I was quoted €30.00 to scan one disc. I feel that if Kodak had waited a few years and did a bit more work to increase the formats resolution it might have been more of a success. The small size of disc cameras were their biggest selling point, but that counted for nothing when the image quality was so poor.

65 points by nickt 4y ago

Tangential Ask HN: For someone looking to get into film photography for the first time, what camera would you recommend? I prefer something as mechanical as possible (less electronics the better!), but a working light meter might be helpful.

greggeter 4y ago
Any Nikon from the 90s with a focus drive motor. Put it in manual and have a ball. https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n55.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n55.htm
frostburg 4y ago
Olympus OM-1 (or OM-1n) if you can stand using silver oxide batteries for the light meter. There are many other great fully mechanical options but they can be somewhat expensive or have issues with finding lenses. The OM-2n is also great but the shutter requires a working battery and it's actually a very complex camera internally (it does real-time aperture priority metering by measuring the light reflected by the film surface while the shutter is open, if you want it to). A Nikkormat FT3 or Nikon FM would also be good choices, but I like the compactness of the Olympus.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Yeah, watch out for battery requirements. Canon A-1, AE-1, F-1 are also reasonable choices. (Basically any FD lens system camera.) The trick is probably finding something that is in decent shape but not "collectible" shape. Looking through KEH's catalog is probably a good start.
  - frostburg 4y ago
    The issue there is that the once very affordable FD lenses are now popular among filmmakers for rehousing, which makes them a lot less affordable. Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper.
    - skhr0680 4y ago
      > Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper No it’s not! Pre-Ai Nikon lenses are also made out of toxic metal that will break modern cameras!
      - frostburg 4y ago
        No, they'll break modern cameras due to their shape, but that's why I mentioned the FT3 and FM.
12xo 4y ago
Nikon FM2. The best beginner SLR ever made. Add a 85mm 1.4 or a 110mm and a 35mm 1.4 lens and you're on your way.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I don't really follow the used market that much, but I'm thinking the is the best answer if you've got a good budget to work with and the other post saying the Pentax K1000 is better if you don't. One potential advantage is the ability to use old Nikon lenses on newer digital cameras, but that's of limited utility when trying to use old manual focus lenses on modern bodies that aren't really designed for them.
  - frostburg 4y ago
    The manual lenses are actually better on modern mirrorless cameras than on older dslr ones, because those had viewfinders that made focusing manually rather hard, while the mirrorless bodies have good focus aids.
joblessjunkie 4y ago
There are many correct answers here, but I recommend the Pentax K1000. It is possibly the world's #1 most-manufactured camera, and was the standard camera for beginner photography classes throughout the 80s and 90s. There are vendors on eBay that specialize in this camera and have literally 100s of cameras in stock. Early models are all-metal, while later ones incorporate some plastic, but are consequently lighter. At this age, I wouldn't worry about the reliability difference of the two, and simply plan to replace the body if it fails. The Pentax K-mount has a lot of cheap, good glass. The 50/1.8 is standard and fabulous, the 28/2.8 and 135/4 are also amazing and can be had for under $50. The camera is entirely manual, with no autofocus or autoexposure available. Optionally, you can put a button cell battery in it to power a simple exposure meter, visible as a needle indicator in the viewfinder. I've been shooting these for 40 years, so I'm a bit biased, but I do recommend them just for their ubiquity and cheap replaceability.
- musictubes 4y ago
  The K1000 and the Canon AE-1 are some of the only model names that people still recognize. They were both basic cameras when new. Ironically, they are now frequently more expensive than better cameras from the same makers. The name recognition has driven search. I now recommend a Pentax MX, the same operation of a K1000 but better in every way. It was a more upscale all mechanical camera from Pentax. If you want a Canon, go for an Fb to Ftb for mechanical cameras or an A1 if you want more automated exposure options. The best deals are probably the autofocus cameras from the 90s. With a little looking around you can probably find a Minolta XtSI with a 50mm lens for $50 or less. It is small and the lens, like all 50mm, is great. It also has a built in flash and a variety of of auto modes to simplify picture taking. Yes, they are cheap, plastic cameras that will not last a very long time. But you can get then for so cheap it doesn't really matter. The lenses tend to last longer. You can get similar deals on other brands too. Pentax autofocus cameras are super cheap but you can find Canon Rebels by the truckload as well as many Nikon (the N/F80 is my favorite plastic fantastic from them).
cpsns 4y ago
Literally almost any working camera will be fine, just pick one you like and have at it. As a beginner your photos aren't going to be amazing, so you won't gain much from some crazy expensive/fancy camera, nor do you even know if you'll like working with film. You don't even need a light meter really (though they are very helpful), basic rules like sunny-16 will go along way and will help teach you how to judge exposure. 1950-60s rangefinders can be a fun place to start. They've got everything you need, nothing you don't, are full mechanical, and often very cheap. The most important thing is to get out, learn how film behaves and to learn how to take good photos. Don't get caught in the trap a lot of beginners do worrying about gear to the point they focus on that more than actually using it.
ruined 4y ago
holga or diana. it's a plastic box with a shutter. you will be forced to learn and get creative.
- frostburg 4y ago
  Those are bad in general and also specifically bad for learning since the results aren't repeatable.
mc32 4y ago
I think the EOS Rebels. Of course you could go back to all mechanical; but this is a decent compromise.
- frostburg 4y ago
  No EOS camera is mechanical because they all use EF lenses with electronic aperture control, I don't think that's what the parent post asks for.
  - mc32 4y ago
    I interpreted it as film. For mechanical the old Pentax K-1000 is a nice entry option.
hef19898 4y ago
I would recommend two cameras, both Nikon since I'm a Nikon guy since my dad handed me his F4 when I was 12 or so. First is a FA, fully mechanical and a nice camera. Not sure about availability so. The second, and already sporting stuff you also find on modern DSLRs, is a Nikon F4. At least over here more or less available, industructible (even half submerged in rain water pictures are great and the camera did not suffer). Benefit of both is that they work with every F-mount lense Nikon ever made. Not sure about the latest G series without aperture rings, could be the F4 accepts those. And those lenses, if you get the good ones, all work great on Nikon's DSLRs up to the recent D780 and D850. And those lenses are available cheap used since everybody goes mirrorless. With a F4 and a decent set of lenses it is easy to go didgital on a budget, e.g. with a used good condition D700. Full format, feels a lot like a F4, both are professional bodies, and not too expensive. Invest the difference to mirrorless into travelling to nice places where you can take nice pictures. Oh, and using film helps improve your photography, if a picture takes time and money to develop you are much more concious about what you shoot. Damn, now I'm motivated to break out the afore mentioned F4 again and some B+W film... Edit: If you can get your hands on a Canon EOS1 your good too. It's Canon's F4 equivalant and Canon lenses are great. Canon does have less lens downward conpatability so. Nikon cameras are hefty, you feel what you handle, Canons are lighter and feel, well, not flimsy in comparison but you get the drift. I like hefty, solid cameras, others don't, so ouck your poison.
xdennis 4y ago
If you just want to try, get a good Zeiss Ikon Contina. It's the cheapest camera (20-30 dollars for a good model) of a great quality that I have. Fully mechanic, no battery.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I prefer the older TLR (twin-lens reflex) cameras — the "box cameras". They take amazing photos (I think). Most larger cities will still have a camera shop selling/processing 120 film. (Also easy to scan the negatives on a flat-bed scanner rather than having to make prints.) TLR's can be had fairly inexpensively on eBay (as long as you're not insisting on getting a Hassleblad or a Rollieflex, for example). Yashica's are still affordable and take excellent photos. Most models are purely mechanical — not even an exposure meter. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=yashica+120&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...
jeffal 4y ago
I just picked up a Nikon N80 off ebay for $40. Early 2000s camera so will shoot in full auto but also manual mode. Ironically can be had cheaper than the earlier semi-auto Nikons.
ninjin 4y ago
There are a lot of factors to consider and also subjective preferences. But I agree that a light metre is helpful, although one should remember that you can get a stand-alone one. There are even ones that fit in the hot shoe [1]! [1]: https://cameraquest.com/voivcmet2.htm https://cameraquest.com/voivcmet2.htm As for camera suggestions, this is where it gets difficult and I know that I did not find the “right” camera for me right away. Initially I shot a digital SLR for about half a decade and while I got better as a photographer, I could never love the device itself and how it “made” me shoot. Got into film with a fairly small 50s Leica that I inherited, moved its 1949 Summitar 50mm lens over to a Bessa R2 after about a year because it has a built-in light metre, had fun with an original (fairly cheap as well!) Olympus XA, and these days I can afford Zeiss glass and a Zeiss Ikon ZM to match. But it sure was a journey and I feel I became a much better digital shooter thanks to it. So, um… Recommendations? I like small cameras – preferably rangefinders – as they are easy to carry and forces me to work within the compromises they make in terms of flexibility for a given situation. If it was ten years ago, I would have recommended any of the Bessas (produced this millennia, built like tanks, and nearly purely mechanical) with a 50mm or 35mm cheap lens, but Cosina has either stopped or lowered production to a degree where you will struggle to find one at a reasonable price these days. If you like wide angles (I do not really, as I struggle with anything below 40mm for unknown reasons) there are plenty of fairly cheap consumer and prosumer cameras from the 80s and onward with built-in light metres. My original Olympus XA was cheap and plastic-y as all hell, but oh boy was it small and could pack a punch with some good black and white film (straight from the scanner on good old Neopan 400 [2]). Sadly, if you want a 50mm on such a camera you need to go into the 60s and 70s, where the electronics easily become a bit more iffy. If you are willing to largely forego manual focus, there is also a whole range of cameras like the Fuji Klasse W, Yashica T5, etc. Just beware that some of these goes for crazy amounts of money these days and they are of course packed with electronics. [2]: https://0x0.st/opC5.jpg https://0x0.st/opC5.jpg With all my rambling, I guess in conclusion what I am trying to say is that you perhaps should consider what you already know about yourself and your shooting preferences and go for what is affordable enough to be “a toy” to play around with to get your bearings towards “the right gear”. At least that is how I finally ended up loving the process of shooting both film and digital.
iNerdier 4y ago
Depending on budget, A Nikon FM or FM2 for a fully mechanical camera with a light meter. A Nikon F301 for an overlooked, very cheap but still really good camera. The Canon A/AE-1 and Pentax K1000 get brought up a lot and are now surprisingly expensive for what they are, there are much better cameras out there for less but that don’t have their name brought up as much. This is a huge rabbit hole to go down with how many cameras got made but if in doubt seek out someone in person and try to use one before you buy it!

jandrese 4y ago

Company attempts to transition customers to a proprietary product but fails. There is a lot of upside for Kodak with this product, but not so much for the consumer, especially at the price point for the camera. Instamatic already existed and covered the same use cases. The only "problem" is that Instamatic was going off patent so anybody would be able to make the film.

ghaff 4y ago
I'm not sure what the sales numbers were for the 110 film Instamatics but it was also the case that anything that used film that was much less than a 35mm frame in area was fairly compromised in terms of quality--especially when combined with other camera components that were low cost.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  Yeah, that was my take. Put a bunch of tiny 110 frames around in a wheel pattern and add a plastic lens (I'm guessing here) and what do you think you're going to get? Even 35mm was marginal in quality (he says from his spoiled-by-modern-digital-photography future). I went back to film and tried a nice Nikon F3 with a great lens. Photos were okay. Absolutely wowed though when I started experimenting with 120 (medium format) film cameras.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    > Even 35mm was marginal in quality 35mm is great up to an 8x10 print. It'll do 11x14 if you don't stand too close. It's 30mp+ of optical resolution. The thing to remember is that at the time, nobody was scanning, they were doing optical enlargements directly onto printer paper, with 6-element macro-optimized process lenses. That's a much higher-quality optical path than you get out of almost any scanner - drum scans and high-end CCD scans (flextight or similar) can get there but even midrange CCD film scanners struggle with 35mm and your average flatbed photo scanner doesn't stand a chance. Nowadays digital has entirely displaced this flow - even at a photo lab you will most likely get prints made from scans. And they're much lower quality than contemporary prints would have been. If they're B+W, try wet-printing those 35mm negatives sometime. Find a local college darkroom and get someone to walk you through split-printing on variable-contrast paper on one or two of your photos. You'll see. https://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/split-filter-printing.html https://www.guidetofilmphotography.com/split-filter-printing... https://www.35mmc.com/27/04/2020/split-grade-printing-darkroom-technique-part-4-by-sroyon-mukherjee/ https://www.35mmc.com/27/04/2020/split-grade-printing-darkro... But yeah medium format is incredibly easy to produce usable scans, by comparison. With top-end gear you can get just as much resolution off a MF negative as 35mm - you can do optical enlargement to several feet or even a yard+ on the long edge. But it's way way easier to get something usable for a 8x10 print or something off a MF negative than it is 35mm.

yuppiepuppie 4y ago

Holy cow! That article was unreadable on mobile with all the ads.

intrasight 4y ago
I read HN comments before reading articles. So I got an extra good laugh when I read that article!
riffic 4y ago
use "reader" mode if it exists in your mobile browser.

plg 4y ago

We had one of these when I was a kid... took it on holiday to Maui one winter. Super fun and easy to carry around everywhere. Only problem was, photos were absolutely terrible. Grain was incredibly large, no detail. I guess because the actual negative was so small. Never used it again.

quercusa 4y ago
But, but: "HR film can be over or underexposed several stops and still produce acceptable prints." I worked in a one-hour photo lab. Disc photos always looked like crap. If you couldn't get a decent photo with the light in Maui, there was no hope.

intrasight 4y ago

Story I've shared on HN in the past. In the summer of '83, I did an internship at Kodak. I worked at the Elmgrove facility where the disc cameras were made. Early in my stint, I got a plant tour of the building where those cameras were made. The factory was going full bore to keep up with demand. I was in awe of the factory and the level of automation and the sheer size of the machines! There were 18,000 people at that one Kodak facility. Start and end time were staggered in five minute increments to manage car flow. To think at the time that just five years later it would all come to a rather quick end was unthinkable.

intrasight 4y ago
And to add: I've often contemplated an alternative history where Kodak had the foresight to invest those hundreds of millions into digital photograph.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Certainly there was resistance to digital photography within Kodak. But they did some work with digital very early on and PhotoCD was another effort to get into the transition from film to digital. In any case, the early 80s was way too early for consumer digital photography to be practical. But what would Kodak really have brought to digital--especially at the scale to replace their consumables business? After all, Kodak once owned a full chemical company (that they spun off at some point) to provide them with their chemical needs. They didn't have much in the way of semiconductor expertise. Their network of dealers could have (and actually did) provide some ability for consumers to print digital photos early on. It's not like Kodak was making anything other than cameras like this when digital came in. Fujifilm did better with the transition to digital by leveraging their emulsion and chemical expertise. But they still had a rough time of it and were a much smaller company.
  - shuntress 4y ago
    The point is that Kodak was so huge and had such a big head start it didn't matter that they had no direct experience with semiconductors. Decision makers at kodak should have been able to leverage their considerable resources to gain market share with the new technology that would eventually replace their main product. All things considered, they did a pretty good job of scaling down and staying alive. But it's a classic example of "My salary depends on not understanding it"

js2 4y ago

> The Kodak Disc camera was introduced with great fanfare in 1982. The new cameras were lightweight, foolproof (with auto-exposure and built-in flash), affordable, and used a brand new kind of film cartridge. My dad owned a darkroom/photoshop/one-hour lab for about 30 years starting in the 70s. I worked for him for about 5 of those years centered around highschool. There is absolutely no such thing as a foolproof camera. You would not believe all the ways people can screw up even the most "foolproof" of designs. As just one example: with a traditional 35 mm camera, the film unspools from its lightproof cartridge onto a take-up spool in the camera. When you reach the end of of the roll, you press a button on the camera to release a clutch, then you turn a knob to rewind the film back into its cartridge before opening the camera back and removing the film. https://filtergrade.com/load-film-35mm-camera/ https://filtergrade.com/load-film-35mm-camera/ One obvious and easy to make error is accidentally opening the camera back before rewinding the film, usually ruining ("fogging") all the pictures you shot. :-( But what you wouldn't guess someone would be able to do is to rewind the film without releasing the clutch. Doing so requires a large amount of force because you're tearing the sprockets off the side of the film where it travels over the gear that's normally used to advance the film. Any yet, this is something I saw more than one time. Customers would never admit to doing this, but I mean, come on, we'd open the cartridge to remove the film for development and the sides would have been torn off and there's only one way this happens. Then there's the questions... no, dropping the exposed film did not blur the images.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Did you ever see eye-raising photos from customers like nudes or even crimes?
- js2 4y ago
  Mostly people take mundane, boring and poorly shot photos. When they go on vacation they take pictures of the same landmarks and in the same ways. I probably printed[1] the Leaning Tower of Pisa approximately 8 million times. Everyone thinks they are clever posing so that it appears they are holding it in the palm of their hand. And while people also take pictures of other people naked, those also tend to be mundane, boring, and poorly shot. So yes, I printed nudes, but rarely were they notable enough to cause me to raise my eyebrow at them. I don't recall ever printing photos of criminal behavior. [1] The one-hour lab equipment we had was semi-automated. The printing machine was about the size of three refrigerators side-by-side. There was a console/desk at one end that I would sit at which had the projection bulb underneath shining up through a small hole over which I'd place each negative one after the next. The machine had a computer which assumed the colors and exposure in each photo averaged out to an 18% grey image. Looking at the negative, I'd have to punch in offsets: e.g. I'd recognize the image has a lot of sky, or a lot of green foliage, or it's at the beach, etc, or it was over or under exposed, so I'd add "+3 blue" or '+2 green", or whatever I thought was needed to offset from 18% grey, then punch "go". The machine would then expose the negative onto the photo paper above which was on a 4" wide by 1000 foot roll. So it would expose 4" x 6" above, then it would feed the exposed paper into tanks filled with the chemistry to develop the paper. About 12 minutes later (as I recall...) the photos I'd previously exposed would pop out of the machine. Another employee, or me if it wasn't too busy, would then do quality control. I was pretty good, but some photos I would have misidentified so we'd have to sometimes re-print a few. After we were satisfied with the quality, the photos would all go into a paper envelope and we'd cut the negative roll down from 12, 24, or 36 images into strips of 4 images. Those would go into plastic sleeves and get inserted into the same paper envelope with the photos. I never really thought about it before, but I guess I've traveled vicariously all over the world through other people's photos. I don't think we ever thought twice about privacy and I don't think our customers did then either. Occasionally someone might mention there were nudes when dropping off a roll, but mostly not. I vaguely recall we had a customer with a mistress and he would use a different name when dropping off photos that included the mistress because his wife would sometimes come in to pick up the family photos. Okay, one more: a guy who had a new girlfriend every few months and somehow he'd always get his girlfriends to flash the camera. It was amusing because we'd see he had a new girlfriend and knew it would be just a few weeks before he'd have a photo of her flashing her breasts for him. It's been more than 30 years, but those are two I recall.

Lio 4y ago

I had one of these as a kid. I think it was the basic 3100 with the gold front. From memory the major problem for me was not the picture quality or an lack of features on the camera. It was the cost of film, developing and that it only had a few exposures per disk. It was just too expensive to run compared to a 35mm camera. A few years later the disposable 35mm cameras came out and that just killed it completely.

sunpazed 4y ago

Our family camera was a Kodak Disc Camera. The crappy grainy quality was offset by the speed and convenience of swapping discs. Lots of family moments would have been forgotten, so the trade-off was worth it. Only problem was price (more expensive to buy and process), and availability (hard to find disc film in a country town).

JKCalhoun 4y ago
Strange how, having become curator for the family photos going back many generations, I have seen the quality of the photos fall off over the decades. Peak home-photography appears to be around the 1930's or 1940s. Photos get worse when color comes along, worse still when Polaroids came along. Growing up we had the Kodak Instamatics — perhaps the worst of the lot?

mikotodomo 4y ago

Wow, I didn't know cameras were portable and affordable in the '80s. I thought this only started after the 2000s.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

> The suggested list price is $67.95. That's $182 in 2020 dollars for the base model camera. Not exactly budget minded for something competing against 110 cameras.

icedchai 4y ago

I remember getting one of these for Christmas when I was a kid, back in the 80's. I think it was a 4000 model? I had completely forgotten about these.

Xx25 4y ago

Ah! I read it as disk camera, and thought Kodak had cameras with hard disks for storage. For a brief time in the 2000s that may not have been such a bad idea.

DoubleGlazing 4y ago

I had a few disc cameras in the 80s. My mother bought them for me because they were cheap and easy to use. It was a great concept in theory, but as the articles states the picture quality was terrible. Every picture I took was a little bit blurry with over exposed colours and that was after taking them to a processor who had the right equipment. I also tried various different brands and qualities of film, all with the same result. I have about 80 disc negatives in a cupboard somewhere. I wanted to scan them to JPG, but I couldn't find a DIY scanner that accepts the format without having to cut the frames from the disc and put them in to a 35mm slide mount. There are a few companies that have the means to scan them, but they are pricey - I was quoted €30.00 to scan one disc. I feel that if Kodak had waited a few years and did a bit more work to increase the formats resolution it might have been more of a success. The small size of disc cameras were their biggest selling point, but that counted for nothing when the image quality was so poor.