Camera Rehab

Jeffrey’s Home For Misfit Cameras grew by quite few when my friend donated a box of old cameras from her father-in-law’s house. They include a miniature folding autographic Kodak from 1915-17, a twin lens reflex from mid-1930s Germany, an American movie camera from the late 1930s and a simple little point and shoot from Ansco circa 1938 called the Jr. Press Photographer.

That Ansco was in the best working order, so I cleaned it up and took it out for a test run. I found both a PDF of the original manual and a video of how to take the lens pieces apart for cleaning, so with my new set of itsy bitsy screwdriver bits, I got to work. The lenses came much cleaner than I expected them to and the disassembly was a breeze. I put a cloth to the outside and got the dust off and in the end, I think it looks pretty good for a 75 year old toy camera.

Before Cleaning

After

It requires 620 film, which is simply 120 film on a narrower spool, so I bought a roll of trusty Kodak Tri-X from the Film Photography Project store, loaded it up and shoot a few photos. 

I had read that this was a 6x6 for a camera, but after I developed the film, I found that it really shoots in 6x9 format, which is cool. That would explain why I got 8 frames instead of the 12 I expected, though. I had a bit of trouble winding the film onto the spool in the darkroom, so some of the frames are bit wonky, but that wasn’t the fault of the camera, which looks to be in fine working order. It’s sharp in the center and much less so at the edges, but it worked out just fine with 400 speed film on a nice sunny day. I think we’ll get some fun use out of this simple little guy. 

And I can’t ever get enough of the name :-)