> These cameras must have sold by the millions from 1964 through the > late '70s, most with fixed focus and aperture lenses. They had > drop-in loading, and all cameras were made to take flash easily -- > first with single AG-1 bulbs, then with flashcubes, then Magicubes, > and then the Flipflash. For cloudy days, you could put a spent > flashcube in the socket, which would increase your exposure by a stop > by reducing the shutter speed from about 1/90 to 1/45. Better models > had electric eye exposure. > > By the early '70s, some predicted that 126 (and the new 110 > cartridge) would spell the end of 35mm by the end of the decade. > Kodak and Contaflex made high-end SLRs that took 126, and many > cheaper brands like GAF offered entry-level snapshot cameras. > > My parents had only a Kodak X-15 Instamatic camera, and took many > rolls of Kodachrome 64 slide film for family snapshots. My first new > camera was an X-15F (it took Flipflash) for my 10th birthday in > October 1979. > > 126 offered better image quality than 110 (and far better than the > later Disc film, which wasn't introduced until 1981, as best as I can > recall), but I think its default position as being a snapshot format > or for amateurs, plus an inherent problem with keeping the film > sufficiently flat, spelled its eventual doom as compact 35mm cameras > with autofocus began showing up in the late '70s.
I had no idea anyone ever offered any kind of quality cameras for 126; all I ever saw were thos Instamatics. That's why I was surprised that there was slide film in 126 format: I couldn't imaging an Instamatic getting the exposure close enough to make it worth while. I'll bet you're right about the film flatness issues being the achilles heel of this format. Keeping the film flat and sufficiently perpendicular to the lens axis would seem to be almost impossible in those cheap plastic cartridges. And the 25mm x 25mm square size seems a bit weird; you don't really have the film area to be able to afford to crop down to a rectangular format like you do with 6 x 6 medium format ;-) -- Mark Roberts www.robertstech.com - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
