cameras — Blog — Leon Bell Photo

Last Friday I walked in to my local shop to snag film for my grandmothers 90th birthday party and came out with a “ Used Crazy Camera”. Just seconds before I arrived a customer had brought in this small unassuming cardboard box and inside was a free camera he had received decades before. I opened the box and was initially more interested in the story of how one ends up with this camera then the actually camera it self. After a short chat and a confusion on how to get the film door open I bought the camera. $5.45

From what I can gather back in the 70s and 80s when there was a big drive to drum up more members for magazine subscription or in this case a BankCard Travel Club, you got a “Free Gift” and some times that free gift was a camera.

The ninoka nk-700 lands securely on the toy camera quality level, being made of all plastic, but is a big step up functional from other toy cameras that came around the same time, i.e. the Kelloggs 110 camera.

Built more like a SLR looking Holga the nk-700 is a 35mm range finder with a fixed focus GLASS 50mm lens, its shoots at a constant 1/125 and surprisingly has an adjustable aperture from a white cloudy drawing to a yellow sunny one (f/6-16). Even more surprising is that it has a flash shoe and it works.… well like every other time but come on how cool is that!

Other then a few ebay and etsy listings there is little history I can find on the nk-700 or ninoka has a company other then they were made in Taiwan but I have high hopes for the camera!

Out of some random chance I got to play with a Sony Rx1RII over the weekend, if you have never heard of this camera its ok its not made for you. The Rx1RII is a 42mb full frame sensor shoved into a body of a point and shoot not much bigger then the Rx 100 cameras and smaller then the Fuji x100 body, its a beast.

After getting over the initial sticker shock of a $3300 point and shoot, i tossed in in my duffel for a weekend meeting at Disney.

We were running late for our dinner meeting at The Boathouse in Disney Springs but after dinner was over someone had the insane idea to order the S'Mores Baked Alaska, said to serve 4 it could feed the 4 of us and 10 other people. It was shocking, people at other tables where taking pictures of this thing.

After a night of a sugar induced comma we made are way to Epcot where I finally could let this camera show off. Just under 2hrs later the fancy $3300 camera battery was dead from full to dead in 2hrs, it was down hill after that. Once back in the truck I let it charge up while we spent a hr floating the lazy river at Typhoon Lagoon. Charged up and hoping it was a fluke we headed in to The Magic Kingdom, only to find out so was everyother fan boy in the world as it was the first night of the new firework light show "ever after".

About a hr in to making our way clockwise thru the park I was already frustrated by the shit design of the grip or lack there of and dials that are crazy hard to use the auto to manual focus switch is damn near impossible to use I had to use my tee shirt for friction ( yes i know the people who buy this will never move it off "P" but $3300 come on), the battery was half dead. No joke I got about 2hrs and the damn battery died again.

After 3 days of 2hrs at a time, I feel like some engineer over at Sony said "Hey you know how they put supercar motors in economy cars for fun, I bet I can shove a full frame sensor in the RX100". What they forgot to remember was this makes the car 100% pointless its a track car at best but its still fucking cool and the RX1RII is just that it takes crazy sharp sexy massive file photos with but does not last long enough to be a good point and shoot, that mixed with the dials and the clunky menu layout makes it a really fancy paper weight.