Heavy Metal Brownie

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.

Kodak Brownie Flash Six-20

Kodak Brownie Flash Six-20

I found this Flash Six-20 at a yard sale a couple years ago.  It was missing the carrying strap, but otherwise seemed in shootable condition.  When I got the camera home, however, I found that there was a small misalignment in the metal case which made it very hard to reassemble after loading film.  I put it aside, and only got around to looking at it again recently when I was planning a visit to a car show at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History.  Some determined jiggling of the parts showed that the camera could be used, so I rerolled some TMAX 120 onto the 620 spool.  The camera has only two adjustments: a choice of Instant or Bulb for the shutter setting, and focus settings of "5 to 10 Feet" and "Beyond 10 Feet".  The curved back film plane compensates pretty well for the limitations of the simple meniscus lens, though there is a little darkness in the corners of the images.

The car show consisted of many fine examples of the Ford Model T belonging to the members of the Albuquerque Model T club.  They parked them first in front of the Museum's B-29 and then drove them over in front of the B-52 for some additional photo ops.

I thought this little panel truck was particularly interesting.