For this month’s FILM is FOREVER feature I thought I’d finally do a post on my Golden Half toy camera! A long while back I wrote briefly about getting this camera and about the fun aspect of play that accompanies toy cameras – you can read it here. This little camera is as basic as they come – no batteries required just film and a little creativity – plus how cute is it?! There are 3 settings on the camera (but really only two aperture settings) – sunny F11, cloudy F8.5, and flash F11 – to adjust the setting you gently turn the little lens. It’s easy as!
The Golden Half camera takes 2 half images per frame – so you actually can get 72 images when shooting a 36 roll – which is pretty awesome! It features a very wide lens, 22mm, which can capture a lot in a half frame making this an ideal tool of candid street photography. Quick tip though be careful that you don’t go up too close, as the minimum focusing distance is 1.5 meters (60 inches) or you’ll get some blurry images. I forgot this and tried to do a few up close images and unfortunately got a bit of blur – but live and learn! I love that you can create a story while shooting! This little camera is super light weight and easy to use. However there are a couple of things you should know if you’re a rookie like me. First, the frame counter is a little bit tricky to read as it doesn’t count consecutively so you need to be aware of your frames and count your halves. I hadn’t advanced the film enough so my first image didn’t count – throwing off all my images by one 1/2 frame – and because I was shooting specific images to be side by side they were all off which was disappointing! Secondly, make sure you label the film so you know which one is 1/2 frames, this way you can tell the developer! My first roll I didn’t do this and I had 4 rolls of undeveloped film and couldn’t tell which one was half frames and the developer didn’t pick up on this so I got all individual images – which wasn’t so bad actually but when you’re expecting half frames it feels like a bit of a let down! Aside from those two pointers I’m pretty happy with this little camera!
Now that you’ve seen the camera & I’ve shared my two cents on it here are some of my fave images from it:
Over all they’re not bad for my first real roll of half frames – can’t wait to take it out again! And in case you were curious here are my faves from when the images were developed individually:
Well that’s it for my first Toy Camera review! Stay tuned for more analogue fun in the future! Have a great weekend and don’t forget to get out there and play a little :).
Cheers,
~Naph
PictureThis MyWay 