Saturday 14 September 2013

Childhood Treasures - Fisher Price Kodak Camera

Nearly 30 years ago in about 1985, I received a camera for Christmas from Santa.

It was a children's Fisher-Price camera made by Kodak and it took 110 film and it's flash involved attaching a strip of cube bulbs to it.

Out of all my childhood possessions it is the one that has still survived and I still have today.

It was a chunky camera, solidly made to allow for dropping and rough handling by children with rubber ends in order to protect it.



To wind on the film there was a large yellow slider on the underside.


And when you took a photo there was a satisfying click as you pressed the button.


Film was loaded in to the back of the camera.  There is still a roll of film in my camera but the pictures would be ruined as the film has been exposed to the light over the years.



A safety feature on the cord allowed for quick opening in case of emergencies.  This was in order to prevent strangulation accidents, I presume.



Here (black catch)  is where the strip flash was connected to 

Having a camera was a novelty for children in the '80's in Ireland and on school trips, and the like, sometimes I was the only child in the class who took photos.

Taking photos on film was quite the adventure before digital as you all know.  It involved a serious process of buying the film from the chemist, taking 24 careful snaps over a few months.  You would then return the film to the chemist for development.  In 2 weeks, or so, you would collect the photos and nervously take them out of the wallet and hopefully there would be lots of nice pics.  More than likely there would a few blurry efforts that would be binned but if you got 20 good pics you would be happy.

As well as being time consuming, film development was quite costly so photos were generally taken at special occasions in my house and not wily nily!

I hope you enjoyed this post! Do you have memories of taking photos before digital? Do let me know in the comments below.

I'd also love to hear from anyone who had seen this camera before or knew of someone who owned one.

Thanks for reading!






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