The compact size and brilliant viewfinder of the Kodak Brownie Reflex make it one of my favorite cameras using 127 film. I still have most of a refrigerated bulk roll of 127 Portra 160 , so I wound up a couple two-foot lengths of the film on 127 reels along with some old 127 backing paper. The Portra would have given me over-exposed images in a box camera when new, but the film is well-expired and seems about right for the slow shutter in the little reflex box.
The metal bodied Flash Six-20 was an outlier in Kodak's post-war plastic Brownie lineup. Perhaps the choice of materials was related to the sudden availability of steel for consumer products. I loaded mine with a roll of well-expired Ilford Pan F 50 for a neighborhood stroll. As I walked out the door I was thinking about the fact that I had not tried the camera's built-in close-up lens, so I snapped a shot of our deck furniture as a test, which the Six-20 passed comfortably. The next two shots gave me some dull, blurred results. I'm not sure if I misjudged the distance, or just didn't hold the camera steady enough to accommodate the slow shutter speed.
I switched back to the camera's "Beyond 10 Feet" setting and got a nicely sharp rendering of some winter- bare trees. However, the left fifth of the image was black -- don't know why.
I stuck with the non-close setting for the rest of the roll and the following full-frame images nicely illustrate the central sharpness of the meniscus lens along with some corner vignetting and blurred periphery.
I got to the Plaza Vieja in Old Town with just one frame left, which was good luck as Elvis was making a rare appearance there for a small group of devoted fans.
We took a walk around the neighborhood with the Kodak No.2 Folding Autographic Brownie.
Kodak applied the Brownie name to quite a variety of cameras. This was one of the more capable ones with zone focusing and multiple shutter speeds and apertures. The Rapid Rectilinear lens is quite good.
The Henry Mann House is just across the street from our place. It was built in 1905. The heavy wooden gate is a block north of us next to a big adobe brick house that also looks to be quite old.
We had a couple inches of snow overnight in Albuquerque. It seemed like a good excuse to make some pictures for February's International Brownie Camera Days. I found one more roll of Acros in the refrigerator, rolled it onto a 620 reel and loaded it into my Brownie Hawkeye Flash. I shot half the roll on a walk around the neighborhood, and finished it off with some shots of Roxie in the yard using the No.13 close-up attachment.
