How many of you remember your first camera? If you’re over 30, virtually all of you would have owned a film camera and at least 90 per cent of you would have been using Kodak film and many of you would have been shooting with a Kodak camera.
Not anymore!
Thursday this week Eastman Kodak company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, ending one of the most storied ventures in the history of U.S. business and a story that has virtually touched us all. Many of the 27,000 Kodak employees laid off in recent years must be wondering how to make a happy “Kodak Moment” out of this. Fate has dealt them a harsh blow as the digital juggernaut has moved on leaving more victims in its wake.
A few years ago, I remember hearing a story that when Kodak began to restructure its operations it demolished one of the no longer needed film buildings at its Rochester factory. As the giant wrecking ball began to swing knocking bricks and mortar flying, many Kodak employees were out on the street snapping pictures with their digital cameras, of course. And who says irony is dead?
My first camera was a Kodak Brownie. It’s still sitting on a shelf across from me in my home office in a small camera collection that goes back to the days of those old, fold-out accordion style cameras that my grandfather used. One thing that you could say for the old Kodak Brownie is that it was simple, the very epitome of “point and shoot.” No F-stops to worry about, no zoom, no depth of field, just point, press the button and shoot.
Those were the days. And those old Brownies amply illustrated one of the most solid dictums of photography – “F8--125 and be there.” Or at least that’s how Dan Mills, one of my old colleagues at the Townsman once put it to me and he’s right because a F8 depth of field setting and a 125th of a second shutter speed will cover about 90 per cent of the picture situations most amateur photographers will encounter.
In other words, you don’t have to be Ansel Adams, or Brian Clarkson for that matter, to get great pictures. The important thing is “to be there.” The “be there” might be near dusk on a cold winter day like we’re now having with your camera pointed at Mt. Fisher and the Steeples just as the alpen glow turns the peaks into a reddish gold.
But maybe my best camera story concerns the very first SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera I ever owned – a Russian “Zenit,” which cost all of $55 in 1972 and was my first photographic move up from my old Kodak Brownie still sitting on the shelf. I took a lot of ribbing about my trusty, old Zenit, a big clunky thing that wasn’t at all like the sleek Nikons, Pentaxes and Leicas that were flooding the market in those days. But it took good pictures and once when I was on a raft race in the Thompson River and the raft overturned and we all got wet with several cameras ruined forever.
But not the Zenit! I took it home, wiped it off and stuck it in the oven for about an hour on the lowest setting the oven would produce. Several hours later, I took it out looked it over and decided to press the shutter – kerthunk. Just like it always sounded and its water-tight light meter was working just as before. It’s sitting on the shelf too, and if I could just buy some film for the darn thing, I’d use it again.
But film today is pretty well a thing of the past. Just ask Eastman Kodak.
This comment and photo came in from SMW.
"I have fond memories of my Kodak Brownie, but I was glad that I was
packing my lightweight Panasonic Digital Camera with its zoom lens to
catch this shot of Gerry Warner reaching the summit of Lakit Mountain
in July 2011, when he led a group of hikers from the E.K. Outdoor Club."
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