The scans below were made from film from a "Hit" camera. You remember these...the "Secret Spy Camera" that sold in the comic books for a dollar or two? You could even get them out of vending machines for a quarter when I was a kid. There was one camera in the machine to about 3,000 crummy plastic toys. (Click here to see original comic book ads for this camera). I recently acquired one, and re-wound the teeny film spools with 16mm black and white negative movie film. this is the same ISO 200 film I used in my Minolta 16mm cameras, and that I'm used to developing, so the actual process was not the experiment, but rather the experiment was to see if one of these little tin wonders could actually make a recognizable image. You can judge for yourself with the six frames below. I will say 200 speed film is certainly to fast for a camera of this vintage, probably originally meant for a 25 or 50 speed film, and of course there are no adjustments except for "instant" or "bulb" on the shutter. My original intent was to use an old yellow filter over the lens to reduce light and perk up the contrast, but, heck, I just didn't feel like looking for it. So, it's with that I present the "Hit" portfolio.

Observations: These things have a heck of a light leak problem. I loaded the film into the spools with the original backing paper in a changing bag, the loaded them in the camera in as close to dark as I could work with and still see what I was doing. I kept a hunk of black tape over the film number window between shots, and only peeked, in the shade, enough to advance to the next shot. I unloaded the camera in the changing bag. So I'm sure all the various fogging happened within the camera itself. the film was the fresh 16mm stock I use in my Minolta's regularly, and I developed another roll at the same time that came out swell, so there is no uneven development. Also you can note especially in the City Hall and the Brick Wall photos that the film plane is a long way from being flat, in fact, if you look it's very curved. Also the viewfinder shows about 50% of what you actually get in the frame. Well, I told my son that if I got any images at all it'd be a miracle and there would be no real need to repeat this exercise. I just wanted to see if it could be done. Now we know.