The Kodak Pocket A-1 was a 110-format camera introduced by Kodak in 1978. In 1980 (and I cannot believe they made it for more than two years) it was renamed Kodak Brownie. It is a fixed focus, fixed exposure camera made almost entirely of plastic. It appears to have a single-element F/11 lens of 24mm focal length and a claimed shutter-speed of 1/60. An Android shutter-speed app recorded 1/32. The viewfinder is surprisingly good, even for a spectacle-wearer. Apparently the yellow button was replaced in the production run with a grey one. I say in the headline “pointless” as I have 35mm cameras that are scarcely any larger. As can be seen in the photographs it is mostly air. Style over substance, you might say. Nevertheless I had a cartridge of Lomo Tiger 200 negative film lurking in the freezer and a trip to Rouen, France, coming up so in the bag it went. Despite feeling a little conspicuous wandering around Rouen and the surrounding countryside I managed to expose the cartridge and sent it off straight away on my return to Analogue Wonderland who eventually produced the scans, five of which are below.
I’m surprisingly happy with these images and the other 19 not featured here. Obviously the grain is very evident and they are not particularly sharp but the colours please me and the exposure is just about right on the majority of the frames. I’m not very happy that two negatives have the blue line across them. I don’t know if that’s from the camera, the developing or the scanning but I intend to ask AW to have another look.
Here is a shot of the open rear of the camera:
And one of the (very) hard case:
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