Loaned my friend's kids a camera

[David]

I loaned my friend's 5- and 8-yer-olds an Akira 7000 plastic camera. It has an auto advance motor, which was great. It's fixed focus, about three-6 feet from the camera. There's an aperture, which helps, kind of. Most of the shots were drain grates and fences, but there were some INCREDIBLE shots, too. Here are some. The films were some Surveillance P4 and Foma 400, both at 200.

Every one of these was taken by one of her kids.

every... one...

1


2


3


4


5


6


7


8


9


10

This is me explaining how film works to the younger of the two.

11


12


13


14

[hasan]

fantastic pov.

[philslizzy]

There were a lot of these 'toy' cameras around, I had a Mintax with auto wind and a focus free optical lens. They are just a modern version of a box camera. They do the job and the quality is ok for the layman. The problem with these cameras was they were vastly overpriced and sold as pro equipment complete with tripod and flash.

Your friend's kids would love it, because it looks like a 'real' camera.

I wonder what it could do in the hands of an experienced photographer. Have you tried it?

[mo]

The Adult subjects seem more natural (or goofy) when a child has a camera. I like the experiment and I like the results....tell them they can work on focus next time..

[David]

I ran a test roll of 12 frames to see if worked. IT burns through four AA batteries every five rolls of film (!!!) and so I'm glad I use rechargeables. I do plan to try and take actual photos with it. Now that I know where the focal points are -- 3-6 feet from the lens -- I can probably take some okay portraits. This camera seems to be okay at that.

The adults definitely had a good time. Actually, most of them thought there was no film in the camera. Yeah. They thought I just gave Dee and Persephone an empty camera to play with.

This one did have the original flash with it. Such a silly get-up. I had hoped the flash would come off (the eBay photo wasn't great) and it comes off the camera but not off the flash bracket. It looks like a sub-par flash.

I like that this camera has a square aperture opening (that is actually a different aperture depending on whether the setting is reached by stopping down or opening up) and a curved film plane. The latter probably helps with sharpness (the edges are reasonable considering this is a toy camera) and light drop-off.