Another old camera format you may have never heard of!

Back to Dick’s Gadget Warehouse, Friday, March 12^th, 2010, Netcast 1045

Years ago I had two APS still cameras, both from Kodak. APS stood for Advanced Photo System and we reported on it here: http://www.twit.tv/dgw745.

Then there was the camera that you loaded with “round film”, the Kodak Disc Camera. We reported on it here: http://www.twit.tv/dgw690.

Photo via http://www.rangefinderforum.comLess known then those two old formats were the “half-frame” cameras like the Konica AA-35. The half-frame format let manufacturers make smaller, more compact cameras than the typical 35MM camera of the day. While these cameras used regular 35 MM film, they were able to take two pictures on every 35MM frame. So a normal roll of 36 exposures yielded 72 half-frame pics. But when you had the regular 35 MM film processed you had to indicate HALF FRAME on the envelope, or your slides might be mounted 2 in 1 frame, instead of one image in each frame. Up until a couple of years ago Wal-Mart processed Half Frame Film and you got back 72 prints. Probably the most famous of the half-frame format cameras all was the Olympus Pen models. (There are still a lot of forums for fans of the Olympus Pen cameras.) But when companies found they could build compact cameras that used 35MM film in its normal full frame format, half-frame was doomed. The Olympus XA was one the first compact cameras that proved it was possible to make cameras as small as the half-frame models while taking full frame 35mm shots. My choice for a half frame camera was the Konica AA-35. It had a lot of features for the time, including the first drop-in loading film. It also had a built-in motor-drive, auto-exposure, and flash. When you finished shooting on the pictures on a roll of film, you flipped the switch on the bottom of the camera and the motor rewound the film into the cassette. Wow! Very high tech for the time! 

Hear this Netcast: www.twit.tv/dgw1045