The Plastic Lens ~ Words

After reading the review of the demekin camera on Nic’s blog (see previous post) I was inspired to unwrap the expired 110 film and load it onto my demekin and take it out on the weekend. Unfortunately the weather was pretty overcast most of the time and the film speed of 100 wasn’t great for low light captures. In the brief breaks in the lowering clouds I did manage to snap off a few shots, once I worked out the advance mechanism and how it cocked the shutter. I think I wasted a couple of frames because of my unfamiliarity with the advance/cocking thing (well, I might have wasted them all, as I haven’t had the film developed yet). Not to worry, that’s all part of shooting with an unfamiliar (and slightly quirky) camera.
I was pretty lucky to have film on hand for the demekin really. My father obviously must have had a 110 format camera at some stage (I think it may have been a Kodak point & shoot, I vaguely remember a tiny Kodak) as I found the two packs of expired 110 in a box of his old slides, but I can’t find any photos from any such camera in the family photo archives…
Researching the 110 film online (well on wikipedia) I was brought up to speed on just how small the exposures on this film are, which is kind of obvious when you see the film window on the 110 cartridge, but is really brought home with examples of scale like those illustrated below (also from wikipedia)

It seems quite funny to me that my first foray into toy camera photography was using a camera that took medium format film, with the lovely large negatives that format offers and following the plastic path has led me to this camera! It is great fun to shoot with and certainly makes for a good conversation starter, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes of it, as well as the results from the other 110 camera I have, the ikimono. I will share the results (hoping that I get some usable images) as soon as I get them.