Kodak Single Use Camera

I used to think that disposable cameras were a waste of money and that any pictures taken wouldn’t be any good anyway, but I have been proved wrong.

There is a wide range of different single use cameras on the market from the ‘big’ names like Kodak and Agfa to the ‘own brand’ ones from Boots or Tescos. I tried the Kodak one even though they are all fairly similar.

These usually cost somewhere in the region of £7 to £8 but there are plenty of buy two get one free offers around so keep your eyes peeled.

The camera is made to be used just once – hence the term single use camera! It comes ready loaded with a film, usually having 27 exposures at a 400-film speed.

There are no adjustments to make before taking a picture, apart from switching on the flash if you need it, you just point and shoot.

When the entire film has been used you just take the whole camera to the developers, you don’t have to rewind or unload the film.

The only mildly irritating thing if you’ve been used to a modern camera, is that the disposable does not have an automatic wind on facility so you have to remember to wind it on manually after each shot. If you forget the camera won’t let you depress the button to take the next photograph until you have wound the film on.

The first person to try these in our family was my cousin who does a lot of hill climbing. He found that he was seeing some wonderful views and decided to buy a single use camera to get some pictures. He went for this type of camera thinking that it wouldn’t be too much too loose if it got broken. The pictures he got with it were first class and both he and my auntie (his mom) have never used anything else since.

I used my first disposable camera when I went to Alton Towers and wanted to get some pictures of the rides and of us on said rides. I didn’t want to take my own APS camera just in case it got broken so I tried one of these. Again I got some pretty amazing shots especially as some of the rides were moving fast when I took pictures of them.

The next convert was my mom. As she gets older she finds that she has difficulty in remembering how to do things, and this includes how to use a camera. I tried giving her an APS camera as I thought it was dead easy to just drop in the film and get on with it, but somehow she never quite got the hang of it. She came back from holiday two years running and found that the pictures that she had taken were hopeless. This year she used a disposable camera and guess what? She had a lovely set of photographs.

So, you see they come in useful for all sorts of occasions. I have even heard of the bride and groom putting them on all the tables at the wedding reception so that the guests can take photographs of one another. The cameras are then all collected and the happy couple has a set of photographs of everyone enjoying themselves.