Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Every once and a while with film cameras I seem to inadvertently cause the back to open no matter what ingenious locking mechanism they had devised.  The results are completely unpredictable but also completely of film.  You can imagine that if exposing a piece of film at 1/250 of a second through a lens creates an image that it doesn’t take much inadvertent light to completely over-expose it.  Here are some examples of light striking film, some of them come from the fact that I sometimes start shooting the first frame knowing that it will likely have been exposed during film loading.

These three little clam shells have something else in common other than their method of opening.  They all have a thumb wheel for advancing the film, which adds to making them look like toys or disposable cameras.  The thing is they most definitely are not disposable, each of them sports a unique lens that out performs there appearance.  Here are links to the Olympus XA2 and Konica Pop10 but this post is about my most recent use of the Cosina CX7.

My Cosina CX7 has been unused for several years now, mostly for the reason that I haven’t gotten back around to it.  Two years seems to be just enough time without using a camera for me to feel a little sense of newness when using the old stuff.  I was pleasantly surprised by the results particularly the exposure system which gave me a full roll of images that all scanned easily.

There is something so quirky about this cameras design too from it’s boxiness to the clamshell that slides up to reveal the lens.  A lens which has as, you guessed it, a quirky 33mm focal length.

 And in case your wondering the fire was a training exercise for a local fire department, nothing but the house was harmed.