[HN Gopher] The Kodak Disc Camera ___________________________________________________________________ The Kodak Disc Camera Author : nickt Score : 29 points Date : 2022-09-04 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (clickamericana.com) (TXT) w3m dump (clickamericana.com) | js2 wrote: | > The Kodak Disc camera was introduced with great fanfare in | 1982. The new cameras were lightweight, foolproof (with auto- | exposure and built-in flash), affordable, and used a brand new | kind of film cartridge. | | My dad owned a darkroom/photoshop/one-hour lab for about 30 years | starting in the 70s. I worked for him for about 5 of those years | centered around highschool. | | There is absolutely no such thing as a foolproof camera. You | would not believe all the ways people can screw up even the most | "foolproof" of designs. | | As just one example: with a traditional 35 mm camera, the film | unspools from its lightproof cartridge onto a take-up spool in | the camera. When you reach the end of of the roll, you press a | button on the camera to release a clutch, then you turn a knob to | rewind the film back into its cartridge before opening the camera | back and removing the film. | | https://filtergrade.com/load-film-35mm-camera/ | | One obvious and easy to make error is accidentally opening the | camera back before rewinding the film, usually ruining | ("fogging") all the pictures you shot. :-( | | But what you wouldn't guess someone would be able to do is to | rewind the film without releasing the clutch. Doing so requires a | large amount of force because you're tearing the sprockets off | the side of the film where it travels over the gear that's | normally used to advance the film. | | Any yet, this is something I saw more than one time. Customers | would never admit to doing this, but I mean, come on, we'd open | the cartridge to remove the film for development and the sides | would have been torn off and there's only one way this happens. | | Then there's the questions... no, dropping the exposed film did | not blur the images. | dannyw wrote: | Tangential Ask HN: For someone looking to get into film | photography for the first time, what camera would you recommend? | I prefer something as mechanical as possible (less electronics | the better!), but a working light meter might be helpful. | ruined wrote: | holga or diana. it's a plastic box with a shutter. you will be | forced to learn and get creative. | frostburg wrote: | Those are bad in general and also specifically bad for | learning since the results aren't repeatable. | cpsns wrote: | Literally almost any working camera will be fine, just pick one | you like and have at it. As a beginner your photos aren't going | to be amazing, so you won't gain much from some crazy | expensive/fancy camera, nor do you even know if you'll like | working with film. | | You don't even need a light meter really (though they are very | helpful), basic rules like sunny-16 will go along way and will | help teach you how to judge exposure. | | 1950-60s rangefinders can be a fun place to start. They've got | everything you need, nothing you don't, are full mechanical, | and often very cheap. | | The most important thing is to get out, learn how film behaves | and to learn how to take good photos. Don't get caught in the | trap a lot of beginners do worrying about gear to the point | they focus on that more than actually using it. | xdennis wrote: | If you just want to try, get a good Zeiss Ikon Contina. It's | the cheapest camera (20-30 dollars for a good model) of a great | quality that I have. Fully mechanic, no battery. | greggeter wrote: | Any Nikon from the 90s with a focus drive motor. Put it in | manual and have a ball. | https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/n55.htm | 12xo wrote: | Nikon FM2. The best beginner SLR ever made. Add a 85mm 1.4 or a | 110mm and a 35mm 1.4 lens and you're on your way. | hotpotamus wrote: | I don't really follow the used market that much, but I'm | thinking the is the best answer if you've got a good budget | to work with and the other post saying the Pentax K1000 is | better if you don't. | | One potential advantage is the ability to use old Nikon | lenses on newer digital cameras, but that's of limited | utility when trying to use old manual focus lenses on modern | bodies that aren't really designed for them. | frostburg wrote: | The manual lenses are actually better on modern mirrorless | cameras than on older dslr ones, because those had | viewfinders that made focusing manually rather hard, while | the mirrorless bodies have good focus aids. | mc32 wrote: | I think the EOS Rebels. Of course you could go back to all | mechanical; but this is a decent compromise. | frostburg wrote: | No EOS camera is mechanical because they all use EF lenses | with electronic aperture control, I don't think that's what | the parent post asks for. | mc32 wrote: | I interpreted it as film. For mechanical the old Pentax | K-1000 is a nice entry option. | joblessjunkie wrote: | There are many correct answers here, but I recommend the Pentax | K1000. It is possibly the world's #1 most-manufactured camera, | and was the standard camera for beginner photography classes | throughout the 80s and 90s. | | There are vendors on eBay that specialize in this camera and | have literally 100s of cameras in stock. | | Early models are all-metal, while later ones incorporate some | plastic, but are consequently lighter. At this age, I wouldn't | worry about the reliability difference of the two, and simply | plan to replace the body if it fails. | | The Pentax K-mount has a lot of cheap, good glass. The 50/1.8 | is standard and fabulous, the 28/2.8 and 135/4 are also amazing | and can be had for under $50. | | The camera is entirely manual, with no autofocus or | autoexposure available. Optionally, you can put a button cell | battery in it to power a simple exposure meter, visible as a | needle indicator in the viewfinder. | | I've been shooting these for 40 years, so I'm a bit biased, but | I do recommend them just for their ubiquity and cheap | replaceability. | musictubes wrote: | The K1000 and the Canon AE-1 are some of the only model names | that people still recognize. They were both basic cameras | when new. Ironically, they are now frequently more expensive | than better cameras from the same makers. The name | recognition has driven search. | | I now recommend a Pentax MX, the same operation of a K1000 | but better in every way. It was a more upscale all mechanical | camera from Pentax. If you want a Canon, go for an Fb to Ftb | for mechanical cameras or an A1 if you want more automated | exposure options. | | The best deals are probably the autofocus cameras from the | 90s. With a little looking around you can probably find a | Minolta XtSI with a 50mm lens for $50 or less. It is small | and the lens, like all 50mm, is great. It also has a built in | flash and a variety of of auto modes to simplify picture | taking. Yes, they are cheap, plastic cameras that will not | last a very long time. But you can get then for so cheap it | doesn't really matter. The lenses tend to last longer. You | can get similar deals on other brands too. Pentax autofocus | cameras are super cheap but you can find Canon Rebels by the | truckload as well as many Nikon (the N/F80 is my favorite | plastic fantastic from them). | hef19898 wrote: | I would recommend two cameras, both Nikon since I'm a Nikon guy | since my dad handed me his F4 when I was 12 or so. | | First is a FA, fully mechanical and a nice camera. Not sure | about availability so. | | The second, and already sporting stuff you also find on modern | DSLRs, is a Nikon F4. At least over here more or less | available, industructible (even half submerged in rain water | pictures are great and the camera did not suffer). | | Benefit of both is that they work with every F-mount lense | Nikon ever made. Not sure about the latest G series without | aperture rings, could be the F4 accepts those. And those | lenses, if you get the good ones, all work great on Nikon's | DSLRs up to the recent D780 and D850. And those lenses are | available cheap used since everybody goes mirrorless. With a F4 | and a decent set of lenses it is easy to go didgital on a | budget, e.g. with a used good condition D700. Full format, | feels a lot like a F4, both are professional bodies, and not | too expensive. | | Invest the difference to mirrorless into travelling to nice | places where you can take nice pictures. | | Oh, and using film helps improve your photography, if a picture | takes time and money to develop you are much more concious | about what you shoot. | | Damn, now I'm motivated to break out the afore mentioned F4 | again and some B+W film... | | Edit: If you can get your hands on a Canon EOS1 your good too. | It's Canon's F4 equivalant and Canon lenses are great. Canon | does have less lens downward conpatability so. Nikon cameras | are hefty, you feel what you handle, Canons are lighter and | feel, well, not flimsy in comparison but you get the drift. I | like hefty, solid cameras, others don't, so ouck your poison. | frostburg wrote: | Olympus OM-1 (or OM-1n) if you can stand using silver oxide | batteries for the light meter. There are many other great fully | mechanical options but they can be somewhat expensive or have | issues with finding lenses. The OM-2n is also great but the | shutter requires a working battery and it's actually a very | complex camera internally (it does real-time aperture priority | metering by measuring the light reflected by the film surface | while the shutter is open, if you want it to). | | A Nikkormat FT3 or Nikon FM would also be good choices, but I | like the compactness of the Olympus. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah, watch out for battery requirements. Canon A-1, AE-1, | F-1 are also reasonable choices. (Basically any FD lens | system camera.) The trick is probably finding something that | is in decent shape but not "collectible" shape. Looking | through KEH's catalog is probably a good start. | frostburg wrote: | The issue there is that the once very affordable FD lenses | are now popular among filmmakers for rehousing, which makes | them a lot less affordable. Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper. | skhr0680 wrote: | > Pre-AI Nikon is cheaper | | No it's not! Pre-Ai Nikon lenses are also made out of | toxic metal that will break modern cameras! | frostburg wrote: | No, they'll break modern cameras due to their shape, but | that's why I mentioned the FT3 and FM. | Lio wrote: | I had one of these as a kid. I think it was the basic 3100 with | the gold front. | | From memory the major problem for me was not the picture quality | or an lack of features on the camera. It was the cost of film, | developing and that it only had a few exposures per disk. | | It was just too expensive to run compared to a 35mm camera. A few | years later the disposable 35mm cameras came out and that just | killed it completely. | jandrese wrote: | Company attempts to transition customers to a proprietary product | but fails. | | There is a lot of upside for Kodak with this product, but not so | much for the consumer, especially at the price point for the | camera. Instamatic already existed and covered the same use | cases. The only "problem" is that Instamatic was going off patent | so anybody would be able to make the film. | ghaff wrote: | I'm not sure what the sales numbers were for the 110 film | Instamatics but it was also the case that anything that used | film that was much less than a 35mm frame in area was fairly | compromised in terms of quality--especially when combined with | other camera components that were low cost. | acomjean wrote: | After they discontinued it, Kodak tried another small film | format (aps). More traditional cartridge style and let you | shoot different aspect ratios. | | But smaller file meant worse quality than 35mm. | | The name "APS" lived on when camera manufacturers used smaller | sensors on cameras designed for full frame lenses. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Photo_System | Theodores wrote: | The problem in the UK was what I call 'bang per buck'. Most | magazines had envelopes fall out of them for mail order photo | processing. This market was a race to the bottom, with the | service becoming a commodity. To keep you coming back there | would be a 'free' unexposed reel of film for every reel you | sent in. | | When the new disc films came along there were no upsides in | area of film exposed, there was no upgrade path (you could not | use the same film in an SLR as a point and shoot fixed focus) | and only photographers that worked commercially were in the | market for buying film. Most people went for the mail order | option or Boots The Chemist, found on every High Street and | able to do a quick turnaround at a fair price. | | The 1980's were also quite expensive when it came to consumer | items. We no longer buy cameras 'made in America' and the | thought of it is quite unimaginable today, you know straight | off the bat that you are not going to be able to afford it. | Furthermore, nothing in store was on a 'point of sale' system | with retailers knowing exactly how much stock they have. There | have been vast efficiency changes over the last forty years. | All of this factors into price. | | On the flip side, the boomers were relatively rich and the | difference between rich and poor was not what it is today, | hence there was a large customer base in the middle class that | could afford these things. | plg wrote: | We had one of these when I was a kid... took it on holiday to | Maui one winter. Super fun and easy to carry around everywhere. | Only problem was, photos were absolutely terrible. Grain was | incredibly large, no detail. I guess because the actual negative | was so small. Never used it again. | quercusa wrote: | But, but: _" HR film can be over or underexposed several stops | and still produce acceptable prints."_ | | I worked in a one-hour photo lab. Disc photos always looked | like crap. If you couldn't get a decent photo with the light in | Maui, there was no hope. | intrasight wrote: | Story I've shared on HN in the past. In the summer of '83, I did | an internship at Kodak. I worked at the Elmgrove facility where | the disc cameras were made. Early in my stint, I got a plant tour | of the building where those cameras were made. The factory was | going full bore to keep up with demand. I was in awe of the | factory and the level of automation and the sheer size of the | machines! | | There were 18,000 people at that one Kodak facility. Start and | end time were staggered in five minute increments to manage car | flow. To think at the time that just five years later it would | all come to a rather quick end was unthinkable. | intrasight wrote: | And to add: I've often contemplated an alternative history | where Kodak had the foresight to invest those hundreds of | millions into digital photograph. | GeneT45 wrote: | My first digital camera was a Kodak. Purchased around '97(?) | for the princely sum of $1000. It was 1.1Mp IIRC and took | excellent photos for the time. It also consumed AA batteries | with the same alacrity that its ancestors consumed film. | chiph wrote: | I had a Kodak DC260 - not quite 2 megapixels resolution, but | had optical zoom with autofocus, used a compact flash card | for storage, and ate AA batteries like they were candy. | Connectivity was USB, IrDA (infrared), and analog video | (NTSC/PAL). | | What many people didn't know is that it came with several | SDKs. 1) It had a scripting language that ran on the camera, | 2) Visual Basic 4 or 5, and 3) VBA for Office applications, | so you could do something like automate employee ID badge | creation. | | Honestly, I don't know what they could have done to make up | the loss of recurring consumable revenue in the digital world | beyond what they already did with Kodak branded photo paper, | Kodak branded memory cards, and Kodak branded accessories | like lanyards and bags. | ghaff wrote: | Certainly there was resistance to digital photography within | Kodak. But they did some work with digital very early on and | PhotoCD was another effort to get into the transition from | film to digital. In any case, the early 80s was way too early | for consumer digital photography to be practical. | | But what would Kodak really have brought to digital-- | especially at the scale to replace their consumables | business? After all, Kodak once owned a full chemical company | (that they spun off at some point) to provide them with their | chemical needs. They didn't have much in the way of | semiconductor expertise. Their network of dealers could have | (and actually did) provide some ability for consumers to | print digital photos early on. It's not like Kodak was making | anything other than cameras like this when digital came in. | | Fujifilm did better with the transition to digital by | leveraging their emulsion and chemical expertise. But they | still had a rough time of it and were a much smaller company. | shuntress wrote: | The point is that Kodak was so huge and had such a big head | start it didn't matter that they had no _direct_ experience | with semiconductors. | | Decision makers at kodak should have been able to leverage | their considerable resources to gain market share with the | new technology that would eventually replace their main | product. | | All things considered, they did a pretty good job of | scaling down and staying alive. But it's a classic example | of _" My salary depends on not understanding it"_ | ghaff wrote: | Kodak could have gone into any arbitrary new | manufacturing business. Heck, they could have invented | the smartphone. But besides smartphones, digital | photography is not a particularly good business to be in. | riffic wrote: | wasn't there a recent initiative to pivot into | pharmaceutical research or chemicals or something? | ghaff wrote: | They do (and always have done) a lot with chemicals and | emulsions only some of which is imaging-related. They | also did copiers for a time--which I believe they got out | of although they do still have a commercial printing | business. I think they also had a healthcare initiative | of some sort at one point but they seem to be out of that | as well. | shuntress wrote: | True this is essentially just saying "they could have | diversified" but my main point is that they should have | diversified into the up-and-coming field where they could | claim some expertise. | | _Someone_ uses precise complicated chemical | manufacturing processes that require a deep understanding | of color science to produce the millions of sensors in | phones, cars, cameras, doorbells, etc. And it 's _not_ | Kodak. | cProdigy wrote: | great | js2 wrote: | PhotoCD seemed like a pretty half-assed effort and there | wasn't really a market for it. There were PhotoCD players | but no one really wanted to view their images on a TV. So | great, you've digitized your photo, now what? People just | weren't sharing their images digitally yet. But anyway, my | dad tried to sell them in his shop, and I transferred 100 | of my favorite images at the time to PhotoCD in 1993. | Here's a few: | | https://i.ibb.co/bPPgvBN/Photo-37-of-100.jpg | | https://i.ibb.co/G5r08cY/Photo-50-of-100.jpg | | https://i.ibb.co/X2nPJgT/Photo-74-of-100.jpg | | https://i.ibb.co/n1pTKC8/Photo-92-of-100.jpg | | Probably shot on Kodak Gold 100 color negative with a Nikon | FE2. Gosh I suddenly miss the smell of film. | ghaff wrote: | I got a few PhotoCDs made when I first got a CD drive for | my computer. PhotoCDs probably came from a place where | the TV was a central fixture in many households and it | probably seemed like a logical extension to how many | people would have slideshows of their holiday slides. I | think there was a certain baked-in assumption by Kodak | and others that the digitization of photography would | still look a lot like how photographs were taken and | shared in the film world. | js2 wrote: | > How many people would have slideshows of their holiday | slides. | | I have suffered through more than my fair share of those. | | > I think there was a certain baked-in assumption by | Kodak and others that the digitization of photography | would still look a lot like how photographs were taken | and shared in the film world. | | I don't have any hard numbers, but at my dad's shop we | probably sold and developed 95%+ negatives vs slides. We | did so little E6 (much less Kodachrome) that we didn't | even bother with it in-house. Most photos were shot on | negative and shared as prints, not shot on slide and | shared as slide shows. So if PhotoCD was supposed to take | the place of a slide projector, it was already a losing | proposition. | | To this day, I have my favorite digital photos printed, | as do my family members. There's something more intimate | about passing around a photo album than sitting in front | of a display. | | I think PhotoCD was one of those things that was too | early since there wasn't demand for sharing digitally | yet, and then too late once digital cameras came out and | made digitizing film unnecessary. | ghaff wrote: | Slides were definitely for more serious photographers | many of whom mail ordered film and sent it off to Kodak | or someone else for processing--though I'm sure it was | still a distinct minority of film sold. One of my rituals | when taking a vacation where I'd be doing a lot of | photography was to place an order with B&H (via phone) | for 20 or however many rolls of Ektachrome and | Kodachrome. | | I actually wrote an article for CNET when Kodachrome | processing was eventually shut down. | https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/countdown-to- | kodachr... | hotpotamus wrote: | I was under the impression that Kodak more or less invented | the digital camera and then sat on it. Digital cameras never | offered the kind of recurring revenue of film, paper, and | chemistry and really only had about a decade as a consumer | product before phones replaced them as far as I can tell. | It's hard to imagine Kodak ever really making it through | that. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah. Imagine Kodak came out with a good mass market | digital camera as soon as it was feasible to do so--so | sometime in the late 90s. There's no particular reason they | could have accelerated the development compared to all the | other companies designing digital cameras. And as you say, | it was only about 10 years until the smartphone came out. | Beating Nikon and Canon at their own came would have been a | big change in strategy and they've been shrinking in any | case. | shuntress wrote: | It's certainly easy to say what they could or should have | done with hindsight. But I think most people would agree | that Kodak was in a strong position entering the digital | revolution. Instead of ending up with a piece of the pie | they are left basically just producing a niche luxury | product and licensing out their brand name for white- | labeled garbage. | yuppiepuppie wrote: | Holy cow! That article was unreadable on mobile with all the ads. | intrasight wrote: | I read HN comments before reading articles. So I got an extra | good laugh when I read that article! | riffic wrote: | use "reader" mode if it exists in your mobile browser. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-04 23:00 UTC)