KODAK Instamatic 25

My first camera.
It was July 25, 1977 …: it seems that it was yesterday!
This day I receive my first camera. It was ugly, quite ugly, and it was using a cartridge with the movie. I believe (believe no: I´m sure) that in the first spool that I used with this camera, there was not even only one photo that was not going out blurred:!!
In this way everything began …

The first characteristic that can stand out of this camera is the perfect accommodation to the #6 rule: Don´t think ! Just shoot!
The truth is that it is not possible to do anything more with her.
It is necessary only to “point” at what we want to photograph, to select one of the two speeds: Its speed selector can be shifted from the sun symbol (1/90 sec) to the half-sun symbol (1/40 sec).
The Kodak 1:11/43mm lens has a fixed focusing and fixed aperture and … nothing more !!!

The film format that uses this camera is 126. It was presented by KODAK in 1963 (Photokina 63). To make easily the movie load in the camera, the 35 mm film (28 × 28) was inside a rigid cartridge, as in case of the format 110.
The perforations of the film are one per still. A small window in the rear part of the cartridge (and its correspondent in the camera), allow to know at all times, the number of the still that is used.
KODAK stopped his production in 1999. I have just found out, on having written these lines, of which the Italian mark Ferrania still made it until 2007. Their product was an ISO 200 color print movie marketed under their Solaris brand.
The Kodak Instamatic 25 Camera is a viewfinder camera for Kodapak film cartridges. The Instamatic 25 was made from 1966 to 1972 by Kodak Ltd. (England) and Kodak Spain, to a design by Kenneth Grange. The flash shoe is for Kodalux bulb flashes. The camera weighs only 150 g.
The image size is actually 28 × 28 mm, but usually reduced to approximately 26.5 × 26.5 mm by masking during printing or mounting.

The film was originally available in 12 and 20 image lengths; at the time they stopped production it was only available in 24 exposure cartridges. Like the 120 format, there is a continuous backing paper, and the frame number and type is visible through a window at the rear of the cartridge. The film does not need to be rewound, and is very simple to load and unload.
The format was introduced by Kodak under the brand name Kodapak, together with the Instamatic camera. Although the Instamatic name is sometimes treated as synonymous with the 126 format, Kodak also used it on its later 110-format cameras, which they called Pocket Instamatic.

written by jaalvarez on 2009-12-28 #gear #review #spain #instamatic #jaalvarez #25 #b-w #kodak #amateur #126 #kodak-instamatic-25