I’ve been curious about 110 film ever since I started noticing these box-shaped spy versus spy looking cameras crop up on eBay, and I finally have my first scans in this format back, thanks to @shutterjunkies all the way out yonder in Texas.
I had no idea that very few labs both develop and scan these (in Seattle, most do neither or either/or) because I’d assumed that with a popular brand like @lomography so gung-ho about keeping it alive and the film itself so readily available, surely the processing market would have responded?
In any case, I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of this very low-res medium. It’s grainy in the best way, making even the most missed focused shots still kinda interestingly textured.
I used a Minolta Autopak 450E which has a simple zone focusing system not unlike a Holga, so getting most of these mostly in focus was also surprising.
I actually had to get this camera repaired after only one exposure, when the film advance mechanism got stuck. The good people at @glazerscamera warned me that it might not be worth the investment, given how cheap these cameras are, but I couldn’t bear tossing out what I felt was a very handsome and near-mint device over something as tiny as a little gear not turning properly. I get sentimental that way.
So, looking back, I love how the next eight frames sort of “document” that repair; two of these were me trying to force the gears forward with a pen. And now the little guy has a new lease on life!
I went through the rest of this cartridge very quickly, as per Glazer’s recommendations to make sure the repair mechanically took within the 30 day guarantee, so I didn’t have any expectations for these shots. In fact, I was pretty sure nothing could come of these, as it was already dusk and this was ISO 100, after all. So I have to say— this turned out to be a whole vibe and a half!
This is how the rest of the cartridge came out after the repair team at Glazer’s replaced the little plastic advancing gear with a metal one, vastly improving on Minolta’s original design. I’ve documented this secret corner of Lake Washington in vivid color before; it’s haunting in the appropriately named Lomography Orca 100.
There’s something about this pocket film that’s conducive to capturing the ephemeral; my camera isn’t actually pocket sized, so it’s not the portability in itself that does it. I think it’s the viewfinder. It’s small and has this way of shrinking down the vastness of a scene and elevating the mundane.
It’s exactly as one viral video from a guy who hands people a camera for a week put it; after using this very Minolta Autopak, the guy in the video said something to the effect of “the viewfinder makes things look cool,” which comes across as totally noobish at first, unless you’ve used this camera and intuitively get what he means.
I also love how light is captured by this camera and how the range is surprisingly dynamic on this film. It really looks like this technology, which is a fraction of the resolution of regular 35mm, should be rendering even worse quality, but I guess this goes to show that even the least professional film media had a lot more going on technically than the earliest digital cameras could approximate. I just googled it and apparently 110 film is scanned at a resolution of around 2465 x 1406 pixels, which is roughly equivalent to 24 megapixels. Is that true? Because that’s more than most digicams of the 2010s.