Here’s a gift for all the gear junkies out there. I’m jamming out another camera review!
Hey all you Sony ABc200x shooters! Calling all the Fujifilm fanboys! No, I’m not gonna sway you towards a Ricoh Daido GR5000, or micro 2/3 or 3/4 or 16/18th crop sensor, digital paperweight. I’m talking about a film camera. Not the YouTube, flavor of the month, medium format 6x7, or one of those Hasselblad panos that will cost you your first child. I’m not even drinking the Lomography kool-aid today (though to be fair, that cult saved my life, in the early 00’s, before it was cool to hate on Lomo…) but I digress. I’m going to wax poetic about the craptastic, plastic, 35mm film camera, known to me as the “Quad-Cam.” Damn, they even have one of these gems in the Cooper Hewitt / Smithsonian Design Museum, so you know it’s legit.
I wish I could tell you the technical specs of this wonder of post-modern technology, but the model I own did not come with much details. So instead, I’ll share some info I cribbed from an eBay post (apologies to whomever this is lifted from…)
The camera takes four consecutive pictures on a 24x36mm negative as the shutter spins round like clockwork. With fixed focus and shutter speed (about one second in total, so 1/4 second for each shot) and aperture. Pictures with four images taken after one another can be great fun. It works especially well with frantically moving people or sports. The shutter is a small plastic rotating disc placed behind the lenses. This disc has one small opening and in combination with the four light chambers, it gives four exposures. The Camera has four 26mm f/11 lenses and that everything from 1.2m to infinity is in focus. The shutter speed is set at 1/100s with .22 second intervals between each frame. The film advance is a thumb wheel cog. When loaded with film this also cocks the shutter. The camera has a small frame counter in the bottom that is automatically reset when you open the back. Pictures are composed through a folding frame finder on top.
Yada, yada, yada… all this info kind of goes out the window when you shoot with this camera. The only thing you have control over is 1) choice of film; and 2) where you point this thing. I found (PRO TIP) that ASA 100 film seems to work best, at least in this gorgeous New Mexico daylight. You might want to use ASA 200 or 400 if you live in a less-bright environment. My roll of ASA 400 was horribly overexposed. The sequence of exposures moves pretty quickly, so I would suggest moving the camera while you shoot, if you are shooting a non-moving subject… at least you’ll get four slightly different images on each frame of film. If you are shooting moving subjects, try not to move at all, and let the camera spin its magic. I really wish there was more control over the speed of the four exposures.
So, on to the results. There is something I really like about the grouping of four images on one standard 35mm frame. The image quality is surprisingly better than expected, from a shitty, fixed focus, plastic lens. I got some really nice results shooting directly towards the sun, where a nice blast of lens flare crept into a fe frames. I also enjoyed the reckless abandon of not even trying to frame up my shots. Just point and shoot, like God intended. I also like being able to hack the camera, by placing a finger or two over some of the lenses, resulting in a frame that has one or two images missing from the frame. Scan a few of these frames in a row and you have a geometric study in randomness.
My conclusions, and you may not agree… spend the 5 to 10 bucks on eBay and snag one of these cameras and try it out. Chances are it will probably break sooner than later, but in the meantime, it will free you up of any ideas of control and predictability. It will most likely disappoint you more often than not. It may also blindside you with wonder and surprise… and magical, fleeting joy. Just like life.