Among the Kodachromes from my wife’s family were a few photographs of people and their cameras. What’s great about them is that they are all common cameras to collectors today, about 70 years later!
Here’s a young woman posing with a deer, an Argus Seventy-Five around her neck. This is a box camera with a TLR-style peer-down viewfinder. It takes 620 film. They were made by the bazillions and you can buy them used for under $10 today. I’ve never owned one, but fellow collector Mark O’Brien did some very nice work with his; see it here.
This stock-straight fellow has a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye dangling off his hand. This is another extremely common camera from this era. It, too, takes 620 film. I owned one for a while and made some photos with it on Route 66; see them here.
Finally, this photo is both at the wrong angle and too shadowy to tell what cameras these women are using. Based on size, I’m guessing they are using 35mm cameras, perhaps something like a Kodak Pony. The bespectacled woman on the left even has her leather “ever-ready case” on her camera.
I wasn’t alive when these cameras were new. My whole life they’ve been widely available at yard sales, in thrift shops, and (lately) online for next to nothing. But at one time, they were the kinds of cameras people bought brand new to record their memories!
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