The Good Ol' Clickey No Focus Days

  • Posted on
  • by

100_2903.JPGSince I'm a huge fan of collecting digital cameras, there were times when I bought a camera but it didn't have the strap on the side. I was going to use the new digicam a few times after I got it to see how it performed. However I'd probably bounce it around and drop it like a hot pan and break it into 640x480 pieces. I needed that little hand strap. So, if there were other cameras, non digital, usually about a buck, but WITH the hand strap, I bought it, took the strap off and chucked these analog turds into my junk box. I just couldn't see throwing something out.

I don't even know what type of pictures these two cameras will take. Polaroid must have tried to be "not the instant cam" company, but I'm guessing this cam is cheese. The silver "Le Clic" cam was NOT one of the 80's pastel color cams they sold a ton of. However, I don't think it will ever see  film. What can I do, use these for planters? Ashtrays? They are even manual wind for film. The cheapest of the cheese.

100_2905.JPGIn the 80's, when I could afford the $10 for film and processing, I started down my photography road and went to BEST catalog house and got a Ansco 235 Cam. Note the ISO controls that I never used (but should have) and yes, it was not motorized. I think it was $30 which was really cheap at the time but when you're making 3.35 an hour for 20 hours a week, it was a ton for me.

100_2906.JPGHere's a better picture. It took really "okay" to "poor" pictures. I actually used my mom's Vivitar (another winner) to take photos when I took a senior trip to WA state. It was a motorized wind camera. It had a bit better lens. That was that. It likely cost $60. Ahhh, they didn't take flash bulbs!

Flint-UAW Autoworld.jpgIt so amazes me that these types of cameras were once called "point and shoot" cameras. Indeed this was the tech we dealt with until about 2002. Built in flashes came down in price about 1982. Before that we used flash cubes and flash bars. It was expensive to collect your own photos. It was a sweet spot for photography. Affordable to the masses. Then, the masses woke up. Even the earliest digital cameras could run circles around most of the point and shoot cheapies that the masses had. When the digicams fell down to $100 with advanced features you'd have to pay $500 or more to get in a film camera, well, pictures like this were forever forgotten until a scanner brings them to life.

I only used the cheapest film I could buy, usually Fuji 100/200 35MM film. My friend Pete and I were big fans of the movie "Roger and Me". It's about how  in the 80's GM pretty much stopped making cars and trucks in FLINT, MI. It was a town that prospered and grew on the back of GM, only to fall into oblivion when GM decided to close the plants they had there. City officials had a big idea to build a huge hotel and a mall and a big indoor amusement park/museum/tribute to the American automobile industry. By the end of the movie, all of it was out of business or up for sale or sold to a college. It was a rainy, cool, overcast day when this picture was taken. Blurred and washed out. But, there it is in all it's fenced off glory. A man built this! It's a hugesueum. Autoworld did have a limited schedule a few months after the first failure but eventually, like many malls, was torn down. A white elephant. In a beat to hell town. We saw it in it's prime. Right after it was made famous by "Roger and Me".

Little Brown Nugget.jpg

Isn't she a beaut? A Sh*t brown 4 door Buick Century. GM's finest turds of the 80's. Next to it is my "Little Brown Nugget" which was the name dubbed onto it by a couple Christian girls that my friend Marc knew. Yeah, it wasn't much and filled with McDonalds cheeseburger and Taco Bell wrappers and it didn't have a muffler so it was loud, but it was humiliation I didn't need. I'm sure they both went on to happy Christian divorces to unhappy cheating Christian men. Bitter? Me? Come on, I worked at McDonalds and drove a "barely" car.  A 1979 Chvrolet Monza. It was an upgrade from my Chevette because at least this RAN.  I don't have too many photos of this car, but the above has  a wonderful blurry "sort of green" tree background. It looks kind of like a Lomograph.

Torino Rear Side.jpgNow this was a real treat. I had some money that was saved for me from the car accident I was in when I was a child. Somehow, I talked my mom into buying this piece of automotive history from my grandfather's estate.  A 1973 Ford Gran Torino. It was as you see it. Not the original wire wheels because they had been stolen years before, but otherwise primo cherry. Gramps has bought this new in 1973 for $3900. I remember driving around in this when I was but a shaver. He moved to Florida a few years later and kept it in pristine condition. Frankly, I'd have rather had the money. It drove like a boat. You turned by spinning the steering wheel and hoping for the best. I kept it for 10 years and tried to drive it more than I did, but it was always a "second car" when I didn't need a second car nor could really afford to have it. Gas was really cheap back then, which was a good thing on a Mickey Macs pay check.

I did use this to haul the McDonalds float one year. We needed to buy an adaptor for the trailer hitch. Where I stored this, it got vandalized a few times losing the trunk badge and hood ornament. They also swiped a $10 Crown car stereo which I had mounted to the transmission hump.

It had shoulder belts, but they were "add on" belts, meaning they were mounted to the roof of the car so when you wore them, you couldn't move. Needless to say, I never wore them. I attempted to drive this in the snow ONCE. On a four lane street, I couldn't keep the ass end from taking up the other lane. I washed it really good and decided it would be a summer car. When I moved to Toledo to work in radio, I didn't have the means to keep this car so I just "gave" it to my brother. I think I sold it to him for "$1" so we could change over the title. My brother was a little better off so I guessed he could keep this car in better shape than I could.

The camera fared a little better on this picture. I do have a picture of myself in a McDonalds uniform sitting in the massive trunk because I had to go to work after getting these pictures taken. Another overcast rotten day, but damn. 351 Cleveland under the hood. It went straight really fast. Turn the corner, not so much. 

Kitchen Lockerroom.jpeg Finally, one of the last pictures I took with the Ansco before upgrading to a cam with time date stamp. (Ohhhh! Technology!)  This may be a kitchen area of a 50's home? A cabinet showroom? A prison mess? You'd never guess. I'm a Browns fan, and since our team bailed on us in 1996, they decided it was time to take down Municipal Stadium. They held a "last play" so that folks who had lived or died by the Browns in this decrepit stadium used for Baseball and Football, a chance to come and say goodbye. We toured the whole place and I should tell you, for the athletes that came through these walls, they must have been like "what the hell is this sewer?"

This was the kitchen area of the training room. It looks like prison. The showers were truly prison like. The "locker room" was just a series of stalls. How much did these guys get paid? They had facilities like this? I mean, most of the players probably had cars better than this. I still shake my head when I see these pictures. Because it was a sunny day, this picture was a-ok.

Ahhhh, digital cams in cell phones and tablets made all this camera crap obsolete. Trash? Never!

ARF! -Ricochet