Cat Interrupted

 The modular construction of the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash makes it easy to disassemble for cleaning or modification.  The easiest and most common mod is to reverse the lens front-to-back.  With the lens unmodified, the minimum distance for sharp focus is about eight feet. Flipping the lens brings the minimum for sharp focus down to about 3.5 feet.  However, only the center of the image will be seen to be sharply rendered, while the periphery becomes progressively blurred.

I loaded a roll of slightly expired Tri-X into my Brownie Hawkeye Flash and made twelve exposures in the house in about five minutes.  Because of the low light I set the camera to use the shutter's time mode to permit an exposure of an estimated one second; the camera was braced solidly on the floor to avoid camera movement.  The first shot caught Ruthie, my cat, unawares at her water bowl.  She was a bit irritated with that intrusion and threatened to leave the room.  I apologized, convincing her to stay, and she composed herself and assumed a more dignified pose.

In addition to the peripheral defocusing the flipped lens also seems to have an increased tendency to flare with back lighting.  

I took the camera into the living room and made a couple shots of Roxie with the camera braced on a chair .  Her skepticism about the process seems emphasized by the sharpness of the eye closest to the center of the image compared to the slight blur of eye closer to the edge. 

Flipped

Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash with reversed lens.

Parade

air power

Cars & Bikes

This is one of the first car shows of the year in Albuquerque. Besides being cheap fun, they are also a good opportunity to try out a variety of photo equipment and techniques. These pictures were made with the Hawkeye Flash box camera with its lens reversed.

Flipped Lens

Old Town Albuquerque







I have four Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash Cameras. One was a gift from Diwan Bhathal, who added a cable release socket and a tripod bushing, greatly enhancing the capabilities of the simple camera. The last one I acquired cost me five bucks at a garage sale; I was hoping the old roll of film it contained would have some ancient latent images, but it was blank. I decided to clean up the camera, and I flipped the single meniscus lens in its mount to produce the effects seen in the above photographs. The surprising sharpness normally delivered by the lens is retained in the center of the image, but the borders take on the blurred look demonstrated here. Some more conventional shots made earlier with the other cameras are on a page at my web site.