DarrylT

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Brownie Flash Six-20

I love shooting with vintage film cameras and here’s a beautiful little camera that’s just about as basic as it gets. The Brownies were made for the tourist market in the 40's and 50's and came in a number of variations. I picked this one up on ebay for around $20, it’s a sturdy little camera, solidly built, all metal and still functioning perfectly. There are two missing parts on mine, a strap that was attached to the top along the rangefinder ( you can just see the metal rings in this picture, which quickly came off when I started fiddling with it) and a very old school looking flash that gives this version of the Brownie it’s name. The flash originally attached to the front of the camera onto those two protruding metal buttons on the face.

Your two available adjustments, “I” for a standard exposure “B” for long exposure and a focus adjustment of either 5-10 feet, or beyond 10 feet

There are only 2 adjustments you can make. A standard exposure setting “I” for “instantaneous”, and a long exposure or “B” for “bulb” which holds the shutter open for as long as you hold the button down. An interesting side note, the “bulb” function is still available on cameras today and stands for the same thing, even though the bulb is in reference to the pneumatic functioning of the earliest of cameras. On those beautiful ancient cameras there was actually a bulb you would squeeze to activate and hold open the shutter.

You also have the choice of focus between “5 to 10 feet” and “beyond 10 feet”. I love old labeling like this. What makes it even more charming is the functioning of the focus. When you flip the switch to “5 to 10 feet” a small lens snaps into place over the stationary lens. That’s it! Want to focus to infinity, flip the switch back and the little lens snaps back into the camera. The closeup “5 to 10 feet” lens on mine is pretty dirty and I don’t want to bother trying to open up the assembly so I just shoot with the stationary lens which is very clean.

Here you can see the original Kodak label on the inner section and on the outer shell the small red window through which you can view the numbers on the film as you advance it

The camera comes apart into two sections and is opened with a switch on the bottom. Here you can see the original Kodak 620 film label. Once apart you can load the film. I usually find at least one spool inside these vintage cameras when I buy them. This one was no exception and you can see the original metal spool on the left.

620 vs 120

620 is a medium format film size, no longer available, which was created by Kodak as a way to save space and create a more compact camera. In doing so they simply shrunk the size of the spool and not the size of the film. This means it’s still possible to shoot with these old cameras using the standard 120 roll film that’s available online or in camera stores. Just get a couple of 620 spools and roll your 120 film onto them (in the dark!). It’s a pretty simple process which I’ll show in another article.

Here you can see the empty metal take up spool

That being said anyone who develops 120 film can develop your 620 rolls. You’ll just want to ask for the film spools back so you can roll more film. Apparently up until 1995 it was still possible to buy 620 film although I’ve never come across any of the newer rolls. An interesting feature of the older 620 spools is that they were manufactured before folks started using a lot of plastic in things. All the ones I’ve found, inside cameras and for sale on ebay are metal as opposed to the plastic 120 rolls used today.