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Special Moments 35mm Focus Free Camera

12 March 2009
By Sean

Special Moments 35mm

I found myself at the dollar store this morning, I’m sure you have one in your town as well. It’s the place where everything is $1, everything. I love dollar stores, I rarely buy anything at them, but I love them nonetheless. They are chock full of things that I never knew existed and things that I know I would never ever want. They did have several dozen of these though. There were black ones, gray ones, green ones, red ones, yellow ones, and I think pink ones (I can’t remember as the green ones stole my attention immediately). I instantly fell in love with the neon green ones and had to have one.

I shelled out my $1.06 and left, realised that I didn’t have any film for it and went back in to see if they had any for $1. I was super excited, film for $1? Any film that cheap would have to be the best. It would be too good to be true. I tracked down a clerk. “Do you have any film for that camera I just bought?” “No” she said, “They don’t make film that cheap.”  I think she was right, although, $1 film is the kind I would want to use.  Come to think of it when buying in bulk, my Superia usually amounts to about $1.25 per roll.

So I had to wait until I got out of work and school to load her up and take her out shooting. While I was loading some Fujifilm Superia 200 in it I got a phone call from a friend telling me to meet her and Mary at the coffee shop. Sounded good, I could shoot on the way. I only live four blocks from the greatest coffee shop on the planet (Dead River Coffee), so I had to shoot everything on the way to make sure I could fill that roll up before it got dark. The coffee was great and so was the conversation.

My favorite shot that I got this afternoon was of my buddy Colin. He’s the group tech savant. Anything computers, technology, etc., He knows it guaranteed. Here’s the picture:

Colin

This camera is something else.  After I bought it I noticed that the lens does not directly line up with the shutter, they are off center.  The focus is very, very soft.  I don’t think there’s one sharp detail in any of these shots and that’s OK, I’m really intrigued with how shitty this camera is. The instructions that were included with this camera are joke.  They are the size of half a note card and have 4 steps.  They were poorly translated and the graphics are great line drawings.  Further there is a slight vignetting in the corners of the pictures, it’s the strongest on the brightest sky shots.  The tag line on the packaging is classic, “Capture the moment, treasure the memory.”  This sums it up perfectly, although, I’m pretty sure I’m going to treasure the memories with this camera more than the memories captured in the pictures.

I definitely got my money’s worth.  If you find one of these cameras, buy it’s worth it.  If for no other reason than it’s fun.  The rest of the images are displayed below.  There are some sky shots, car shots, road and alley shots. All very fun.


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One Response to Special Moments 35mm Focus Free Camera

  1. Santa on 11 March 2015 at 3:42 am

    I felt like I can hear someone snhotiog an M9 in a room with peoples talking, so it’s not that silent.IMO, the best is to have them into their own business so they don’t care about someone snapping behind their back :D

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