The Eastman Kodak Company turned 50 in 1930, if you measure it by the year that George Eastman first rented space in Rochester, New York, to make photographic dry plates. The name Kodak wasn’t coined until 1888, when the first Kodak camera was introduced. The company wouldn’t be named the Eastman Kodak Company until 1892. But as Eastman Kodak was counting it, 1930 was the golden anniversary. The company celebrated it by reintroducing a popular box camera first built in 1913, the No. 2 Hawk-Eye, Model C — the 50th Anniversary of Kodak edition.
They covered the camera in brown leatherette, trimmed it in goldtone, and affixed a golden sticker to the side proclaiming the 50th Anniversary of Kodak. (On mine, if not on most, the gold sticker has faded to silver.) The company manufactured more than a half million of them just to give them all away to children who turned 12 that year. Through this anniversary giveaway, Eastman Kodak wanted to encourage a whole new generation to embrace photography.
This camera is a gift to the Jim Grey Home for Wayward Cameras, from the same retired pro who sent me the black No. 2 Hawk-Eye I reviewed recently. It is in good condition. The viewfinder is dim, but that’s par for the course. I swabbed it with isopropyl alcohol, which cleaned it up nicely. But it’s still a small viewfinder and challenging to compose in. There’s no landscape viewfinder, either, and if you try turning the camera on its side to compose landscape the camera rewards you by turning the image upside down.
Because Kodak made so many of these, they’re inexpensive and easy to find. The portrait viewfinder does limit the camera’s usefulness, however.
If you like box cameras, I’ve reviewed a bunch: the Ansco B-2 Cadet (here), the Ansco Shur Shot (here), the Kodak No. 2 Brownie in both Model D (here) and Model F (here), and the Kodak Six-20 Brownie (here). Or see all of my camera reviews here.
I put some Kodak T-Max 100 into this box Hawk-Eye and took it on a lunchtime walk around the neighborhood. I developed the roll in Rodinal 1+50 and scanned the negatives on my Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II.
The images are all a little soft, but contrast is much improved over the black No. 2 Hawk-Eye I also have. It’s not impossible that I underdeveloped the roll from that camera.
The shutter lever doesn’t stick very far out from the body on this camera, which I’m sure is a manufacturing fault and not the norm. It wasn’t a giant deal, but a couple times after composing my thumb couldn’t find the shutter lever and I had to turn the camera to locate it and then recompose.
It’s always remarkable to me how capable a simple meniscus lens like the one in this No. 2 Hawk-Eye can be. You just have to make sure you’re standing at least six feet away from your subject, as that’s as close as these lenses usually can focus.
I found the portrait-only viewfinder to be too limiting as I looked for subjects. A landscape-only viewfinder would have been less limiting for me.
To see more from this camera, check out my Kodak No. 2 Hawk-Eye, Model C, 50th Anniversary of Kodak Edition gallery.
It was fun to experience this Kodak No. 2 Hawk-Eye, Model C, 50th Anniversary of Kodak edition. But because of its portrait-only viewfinder I’m unlikely to use it again. My two Kodak No. 2 Brownies (Model D and Model F) function essentially the same, but are more versatile because they offer both portrait and landscape viewfinders.
If you like old film cameras, check out all of my reviews here!
To get Down the Road in your inbox or feed reader, subscribe here.
