Cameras made in the United States
What is it? This is a Brownie Starmatic made by the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, NY between the years of 1959 and 1963. It was the first Brownie camera to have both an exposure meter and automatic exposure. It is a simple, mostly plastic camera that used 127 roll…
This is a Detrola Model E, a compact roll film camera made by the Detrola Corp out of Detroit, MI starting in 1939. The Detrola Model E shoots 3cm x 4cm images on 127 format roll film. Detrola made a variety of similar models all with different combinations of features,…
What is it? This is a Kodak Flash Bantam, a strut folding camera with a Bakelite and metal body. The Flash Bantam updated the original Bantam 4.5 with flash synchronization and a new Lumenized lens coating to improve accuracy when using color film. It used 828 film which was originally…
What is it? This is a Kodak Bantam, a strut folding camera with an entirely Bakelite body, a single speed shutter, doublet lens, and a maximum aperture of f/6.3. This was Kodak’s first camera designed for their new 828 format of film. 828 was originally designed to be an inexpensive roll…
What is it? This is a No.1A Pocket Kodak folding camera made by the Eastman Kodak Company between the years of 1926 and 1932. It used Autographic 116 film which allowed photographers to open a tiny door on the back of the camera and write notes about the exposure which would…
This is a Bolsey B2 35mm fixed lens rangefinder camera made by the Bolsey Corporation of America between the years of 1949 – 1956. The B2 is a very compact and lightweight die-cast aluminum bodied camera that features a lens and shutter both made by Wollensak, out of Rochester, NY.…
This is a Clarus MS-35 camera made by the Clarus Camera Manufacturing Co. based out of Minneapolis, MN. This was the first and only camera made by Clarus and was sold between the years of 1946 and 1952. The Clarus MS-35 was an ambitious 35mm rangefinder that bore a striking…
When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth… This is a followup to an earlier post I spontaneously wrote back in August called “The Cameras of the Dead”. In that article, I applied a tongue in cheek analogy to George Romero’s 1968 classic “The Night of…
What is it? This is a No. 2 Brownie Model D box camera, made by the Eastman-Kodak company around 1914. The name “Brownie” has been used by Kodak on a huge variety of inexpensive cameras starting with the very first model in 1900, all the way to Bakelite bodied cameras…
What is it? These are two different variants of the No. 1 Panoram- Kodak. The model on the left is the Model D, and the one on the right is an earlier version, simply called the No. 1 Panoram-Kodak. Both cameras were designed for 105 format roll film, and took…
…they’re coming to get you, Barbara… George Romero’s 1968 film, “The Night of the Living Dead” is a movie almost anyone with an interest in cinema is familiar with. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fan of horror or not, most everyone has at least heard of this groundbreaking low-budget…
What is it? This is a Univex Mercury Model CC camera made by the Universal Camera Company out of New York, NY in 1938. The Mercury was a historically significant camera in that it was the first time a US camera maker produced a camera capable of speeds of 1/1000…
