My First Camera

This is a Baldi, a camera that my father gave me when I was about twelve years old. It was my first 'real' camera beyond a Brownie and I was thrilled. You can see from the cell-phone next to it that it was pretty compact, so that when folded it would fit in my shirt pocket! It took the same film as the Brownies, 127, but it was half frame so I could get twice as many shots on a roll.

I don't remember ever shooting color with it, only black and white, and I'd use the information sheet from the film to set my exposure. We had a darkroom in the basement and that's where I learned the rudiments of developing and printing. I still have a stack of 4x5 prints, though they're so curled they're difficult to handle without possibly cracking the photos.

As you can see, this little gem has full controls. The aperture adjusts from f:2.9 to f:16, the shutter from 1 second to 1/300 plus time and bulb, and you can focus from 3 feet (1 meter) to infinity. The viewfinder has a parallax control to coordinate it with the lens according to the distance, but since I had to guess at the distance anyway I'm not sure how effective it was. It has its own little stand, but also a standard tripod mount. But the nicest feature of the camera is the lens, a 50mm Xenar made by Schneider-Kreuznach, one of the top lens makers from Germany at the time. In spite of the small size of the negatives, the photos were remarkably sharp!

It's nice when you come across something from your past, how it triggers so many memories. But don't worry, I'm not going back to film! ;^)