Junk and Cheap Camera Month: Will it or won’t it work for me?

I actually bought this camera, it wasn’t given to me for free. But get this, I bought it for 25p or rather I got four camera for 99p. This was one of them. Basically, I put a minimum bid on a lot and nobody else bid. I have already written about one of the other cameras, a Samsung, but I still have two I can write about this month. I haven’t tested them yet, but they fit the brief of less than £5.

Not only was this one very cheap, but it was in amazing condition. The battery compartment was as clean as a whistle, barely a mark on the whole thing, and it came in the original box with the instructions.

Look at the size of that viewfinder!

I couldn’t find any reviews on the web to compare to or gather information from, just posts of people selling this camera. That didn’t bode well.

I did have the instructions which had a specification section with all the technical details I might need, apart from one.

So, there you go…an automatic flash, a fixed shutter speed, but no information on the aperture size. I would guess it might be fixed at f9 like many point and shoot cameras.

I loaded this example with a roll of Santa Color which is rated at 100asa and has good latitude. The camera reads DX coded films of 100asa or 200asa and rates them at 100, it also reads 400asa. If a film is not DX coded the camera defaults to 100asa which was perfect for this film.

I ended up taking the camera on a few walks, to the B29 at Bleaklow, to Leeds, and to Malham. It made all the right noises and the flash fired when it was needed, which wasn’t often as the weather was actually nice for a change.

And, wouldn’t you know it, this 25p camera worked perfectly.

Though the camera worked perfectly, I made a couple of mistakes. I fogged the film at the beginning and my finger was visible on a couple of shots I didn’t upload.

Well, that was a very successful cheap camera purchase, it was not junk. So far two of the four I bought have worked well. For this camera, the results are not the sharpest in the world, but they are acceptable. So, did it work for me? YES.

I am going to give this camera away to a friend who has contracted a bad case of GAS, maybe I can help alleviate it very cheaply.