Those Brownie Days Of Yore

Whenever I wasn't using one of my three trusty super 8 movie cameras to capture the fleeting youth of my friends & family back in the 1970s and 80s (movie film was always my first choice), I would turn the job over to my aging fleet of cheap Brownie cameras which never failed to perform admirably under conditions that were often less than perfect. Not such an easy feat for equipment that was 30 years old at the time.


The picture above ("Four thugs looking for trouble on 33rd Avenue") was snapped with the short/plump Hawkeye Brownie camera - an extremely popular model from the 60s that was simple to use and always delivered a decent picture in a functional square format.




However, it was the results I received from a second Brownie box (Target six-20 US model; discontinued in 1947) that gave me the most satisfaction. Producing an almost 3 to 1 ratio image, this old camera allowed me to shoot a wider more dramatic 'landscape' photo (above) or, if I merely tilted it 90 degrees, a taller than usual 'portrait' photo (below) both of which seemed to dwarf the square results of the Hawkeye when placed side by side.


Laine, myself and Brownie the camera.
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It wasn't until the summer of 1986 after meeting up with Linda that I bothered to improve the situation with my camera collection. (The two events were not unrelated.) For the next 20 years (1986 to 2006) the Brownies sat on a closet shelf and I came to depend on my dandy new 'Canon' for any photo taking sessions. I am in fact, surrounded today by dozens of photo albums, each overflowing with excellent results gained from this machine. A rare picture of myself WITH the Canon camera of which we speak (plus Mickey Mouse strap) is supplied at this point.

Yes, I'm quite comfortably established in the digital world these days (Olympus Stylus 700/7.1 megapixel) and there's simply no comparison between the old and the new, but those Brownie days of yore were far from wasteful. Far from inferior. It's too late now, but I wish I'd taken twice as many pictures than I did with them. Every time I pass around the photo albums from the deep dark past, it's the old Brownie shots that get the most attention from viewers. Viewers like you.