I've always loved the physical product that film produces. The convenience of digital photography is brilliant, but there is something special about holding a captured moment in your hand as the photo itself has been effected by time and touch. I stumbled upon this beautiful little kodak duaflex camera at a yard sale at the beginning of the summer. I had fiddled with my grandpa's old camera enough to know what I was looking for and immediately purchased the $5 camera. I found film on B&H and immediately began cleaning up the camera. A few adjustments were made, a few photos ruined, but I eventually got the hang of things. I spent the afternoon out on the farm at home in Tennessee with Rascal and then took the camera to New York with us. I wrapped up the roll of film when we visited the Columbus Zoo a couple weeks ago.
The Duaflex is a medium format camera which uses film larger than a good ol' 35mm camera, but smaller than large format film. Due to the larger size of the film, the format allows for better control of depth of field and produces a sharper all around image making better quality enlargements. The box Brownie popularized medium format film making it more accessible to the average person (initial market price was $1), and was adored for its compact, portable nature. Today, medium format film can be tricky to find and is priced similar to instant film (about $1.00/image), but if handled properly, the final result is always gratifying. The images themselves produce a dream-like, nostalgic nature unique not only in their high quality resolution but their square shape.
Above: the Brooklyn Bridge, NYC.
Below: Asian Elephants and Ben, Columbus Zoo.
While the model that I have comes with a "double-exposure prevention button" (you have to hold a lever while you press the shutter and it locks so you don't press it again before manually advancing the film), the camera itself cannot guarantee that you forget to advance the film and press the lever and the exposure button again... However, sometimes it can result in happy accidents like the photo below. I wish I could say that I planned this, but I did not. That's my favorite Ohio tree with Times Square in the background.
