Pokemon camera

About 10 days ago, I had been drinking with friends, and bought a Pokemon camera from eBay.     It was $15 including shipping.     I’m glad my tipsy buying spree was so relatively harmless.

I had had a few of these before, but I don’t recall using them.   But I remembered that their unique feature was a clear plastic acetate just in front of the film plane which has Pokemon characters around the frame, so they’re in every photo.

Here’s a picture of the camera where you can just see that plastic.  Note the non-rectangular opening in front of the lens.  This is to block the image so that the Pokemon in the corners of the frame are not double exposed with your photo.

I loaded up the camera with some cheap expired and high speed film, and went to a few parties.   I knew I’d be using the flash, and the film was old, which is why I grabbed some ISO 800, 400 and 200 film.   Some of it turned out unusably grainy.

At the 2nd party of the night, a friend expertly cut the front white plastic of the camera away so I could have a rectangular frame.   I didn’t mind if the Pokemon characters were overlaying my images.

Here are images before the corners were cut out.

Here are pictures from the next party, after my friend cut out the corners of the white plastic in front of the lens:

I was shooting some Kodak C41 black & white film.

My friend the Mexican bee with members of his bicycle club.

As you can see, the image STILL doesn’t reach the edges of the frame.    I’m tempted to remove even more of white plastic from in front of the lens.

Also, I’m curious how pictures would turn out in the daytime without a flash.  I dimly recall that the last time I had one of these cameras, I tried to cut the acetate in front of the film plane out, and tape it into another camera, but I can’t find any photos I shot like that.

Everyone loves seeing this camera.   It’s perfect for a party where a DSLR would seem too serious.   And why not have a bunch of fun with this toy camera?