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Stupid idea because a roll has more surface area per volume, and cameras don’t need fast random access all over the whole surface like computers do. Easy-insert dual-roll film cartridges existed back then.
The camera was thinner with worse quality and fewer photos per cartridge.
Each picture was more than a dollar each - adjust for inflation and more than $3 each. for grainy low quality photos since that flat camera didn’t allow for good lenses.
Yeah, it was meant for the convenience of the unwashed masses who didn’t care that much about quality. Quick & easy to change cartridges were a major improvement over the minor hassle of manually starting a roll of film as far as those people were concerned. The cost was the big thing that kept them from being as huge a success as they might otherwise have been.
My father owned one of these. He also owned a 35mm and a medium format twin lens reflex. On what information are you basing your “it was meant for the unwashed masses who didn’t care that much about quality” statement
I recall kodak advertising it to the people who owned nice 35mm - for places you wouldn’t take the expensive camera.
yeah that makes sense. lugging around a 35mm was a drag in those days
Hopefully he’s still around and you can ask him about the relative image quality between those formats. If he was interested in quality, he wasn’t going to grab the disc camera. It wasn’t like Betamax where it was superior but lost a battle in the marketplace. Disc film was objectively much worse than even 110 while being much more expensive to buy and process.
I understand the difference in quality between a 120mm neg and a 10mm neg, especially considering the lens was a shitty little piece of plastic a centimeter from the media.
he’s not around any longer. my point was that it wasn’t for dumb people who didn’t know any better, it was a novel film format that a lot of people bought because it was different and interesting.
it wasn’t for dumb people who didn’t know any better
I mean, it kind of was though, wasn’t it?
Just because more knowledgeable people found it interesting and got it for the novelty or to see how it worked doesn’t mean it wasn’t a product intended for people who, Kodak hoped, wouldn’t know any better. That doesn’t mean I’m saying your father didn’t know better.
yeah fair enough.
I actually got a bit nostalgic and interesred due to this post and read the wikipedia article about them, and supposedly the prints were supposed to ne made with this six lens process but few labs got the equipment needed, and continued to develop the film with standard three lens systems, so the photos came out with half the quality the producers intended
Interesting!
It was a sarcastic remark regarding the complaint about the lack of quality made by the person I responded to - I was thinking about how perfection snobs often look down upon those for whom “good enough” actually is good enough.
ah right fair enough
I got a flu shot and a covid booster at the same time yesterday and this is the second time Ive completely missed someone was joking. probably best I just dont read anything for another day or so
Nah, it was subtle enough that my meaning wasn’t necessarily clear.
i refuse to allow you to absovle me of sole culpability on this matter sir
Yeah, it was meant for the convenience of the unwashed masses who didn’t care that much about quality (see Polaroid). Quick & easy to change cartridges were a major improvement over the minor hassle of manually starting a roll of film as far as those people were concerned. The cost was the big thing that kept them from being as huge a success as they might otherwise have been.
110 was much better quality photos and had the same ease of starting. Polaroid has much higher quality prints, though they were limited to exactly one size, while in theory you could enlarge disk to larger. With the grain being so bad I don’t know why anyone would (though the article implies that good development processes were not as grainy - but I never saw that)
If Polaroids were much “much higher quality” than both 110 and disc (I don’t recall having seen the output of either of the latter two), then 110 and disc must have been extremely bad. I saw a fair number of Polaroids in my younger days, and they always looked very soft and blurry.
I was too young when 110 was released to know for sure, but it seemed to me it never really was marketed much so it never became all that mainstream. I think the advertising is what drove disc to achieve the market penetration that it did, and that was why it did better than 110 - at least for a little while.
It has been so long I don’t recall how polaroid compared to 110. I had a disc as a kid so I recall how disapointed I was in it. come to think of it the ‘polaroids’ I remember were kodak before they lost the patent battle and recalled them all.
i loved my disc camera. nice and flat
Hey, I found one of these at a thrift shop a while back. It’s very cute.
