A guide to using your Brownie box camera.
1. Have patience. Do not rush.
2. Put aside plenty of time to load film, taking into consideration complete lack of formal instructions. Take more time. Research. Then think some more.
3a. Do not assume that with technology being much more complex nowadays that things from way back when are by default automatically simpler. They're not.
3b. In short there's more than one way to put a film in a box (or so I discovered). The shortest route is rarely a right one. Here are two diagrams to demonstrate:
a wrong-un
and a winner
4. Having paid no attention to any of the above, do not under any circumstances decide to wind the winder- having, naturally, loaded the film incorrectly.
5. Having, of course, wound film on and being unable to wind in opposite direction (they just don't work that way), inevitably trapping cassette within Brownie box, you will now require the following tools:
- vaseline (for soothing rubbed out finger nubbins, what with all the winding, tighter and tighter till there's no prints left)
- scapel (not for your nubbins)
- tweezers
- even more patience
Finally I released the trapped cassette- using a combination of the tools above- and rectified my mistakes. Loaded up successfully I went on my merry way, off into the sunset, armed with my box and a flash unit. Looking forward to seeing what comes back.
