Box Brownies

blondie606

blondie606

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Lynne
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Hi all

not sure if this is the right place to post this :shrug:

Does anyone know if it's still possible to get film for a Box Brownie ( circa 1930 ) ? & if so where's the best place to buy from ?

Just discovered one at my folks & would love to see what it can do

thanks in advance , Lynne
 
if you can identify the camera - there's an awful lot of variants - then it might be possible to get hold of film

have a look here - see if you can find which one, and identify the type of film it'll take.

Most of the film sizes are discontinued these days, 120 and 35mm are pretty much the only film rolls available generally, though there are people hand-rolling 620 for example...
 
Most of the more common Brownie Models used 220/120 roll film which is still readily available from suppliers. Best to shop around for processing and printing.
 
Do you have any empty film spools with the camera. It would seem from this site - link that your camera used 616 or 620 film which hasn't been made for some time. They suggest that you can buy 120 film but would need to transfer it on to an empty 620 roll. I would assume that you would need two rolls at least so you had an empty roll to wind the exposed film onto as you took the shots.

I'm sure someone else will come along to confirm if this is correct :)
 
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^^ what he said.

but I have got away with just using a straight roll of 120 in one before,
 
I've recently resurrected a Brownie Six-20 Model C and successfully used 120 roll film through it.

The diameter of the spool shaft and spool ends for the Brownie are smaller than current plastic 120 spools, so I re-rolled the film onto the Brownie metal spools. You need 2 of these, 1 for the film itself and 1 for the film takeup as you wind on.
You'll need a changing bag or other totally light-tight space to do the re-rolling in; it's a bit time-consuming as 120 film seems to go forever as your winding onto a thin spool!
I've read of some people being able to trim or modify the spool ends of 120 film to make it fit, but this didn't look like it would work for my model.

Was it worth the hassle? You bet; it's very liberating peering down through a basic mirror finder & trying to frame correctly (harder than framing through a waist level Mamiya finder as it's pretty small), pressing the one and only button and hearing the dinky little click. No bells, no whistles, no dials, no overrides.
Now once I'd developed the negs I understood why it was sold as a popularist snaphot camera; the verticals are distorted, it doesn't do close-ups at all well etc etc but it lends a low-fi charm to even basic images.

I'll definitely be using it again.

There is a good pictorial about re-rolling film and other resources (including links to images taken on various Brownies) on this site

http://www.brownie-camera.com/

Edit: I see this has already been linked above.
 
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OMG...thanks for all the info & advice peeps,much appreciated (y)

It's a Kodak Nu2 Hawkey Mod C & next on my list of ever growing want list is the film . I'll take a good look at the sites you've linked to & go from there...quite exciting :D
 
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