Monday 19 January 2015

Box Brownie

That picture I posted yesterday really got me going.  I spent far too long trawling through a mass of pathetic teenage and pre-teenage pictures I took using my trusty old Box Brownie camera, the sort where you just pointed the thing and pressed a button.  It had to be a reasonably bright day or the result was bleh.  Of course, in those days I new nothing about composition, nor did I bother to get human subjects to stand out from the background.  I rather suspect that I was aiming to get both landscape and portrait into the one picture!  I'm not claiming that my photographic skills are all that much better today, but they are at least a little better.

What does surprise me is the quality of the photos those old Box Brownie cameras could produce.  Of course, when they came back from the chemist the prints were a mere 2½” x 1½” so a lot of detail was lost.  All the same, this picture of Folkestone harbour was taken on my BB back in 1957 and I am still fairly pleased with it.


5 comments:

joeh said...

I had one of those cameras. It came with a faux leather plastic case, had a flash attachment, and a wind up film loader that exposed the first two pictures. It was a great camera, but it did not take pictures as good as yours.

The Broad said...

You should be pleased with it. The picture is wonderful...

#1Nana said...

It is a great photo. I have a lot of old black and whites that my parents took in England after the war and a few color shots taken in 1952 on some of the first Kodak color film in England. My dad worked at Kodak and took test shots on newly developed products. There's a lot of history in those old photos.

Brighton Pensioner said...

Thank you all for your kind words.

Suldog said...

I had a brownie when I was very young. I don't think I have any of the photos I took, though. I like yours here, with the boats in the muddy sand. Very moody.