Kodak instamatic

[Niner Alpha]

The Kodak instamatic was the camera of the Vietnam War for the soldiers at the pointed end of the spear. They were cheap....less than $20. Made between 1962 and 1970, they could be dunked in a river and be dried out, reloaded and were good to go again. There was no light meter. There was no built-in reusable flash. There was only one aperture and one shutter speed. The film came in a cartridge that you only had to drop in and didn't have to thread through a winder. It was simple and disposable. The photos we took were either mailed off to Hawaii to develop or sent home for the home folks to get developed.

Now days, if we still have one, there is no film being made to put in it and even if there were, the commercial developers are fast going away.

Most of the photos in the photo album were taken with one that had a model number on it that either ended in zero...like the 100 or like the one in the collage that ended in a number four. The idea was that the "O"'s had a pop up flash holder and you put in a bulb for each flash and the number ending ones used a flash cube that rotated for four shots. Didn't matter which you had since you likely didn't have any flash bulbs anyway.

Another thing about photos... we were, the overwhelming majority of us.... careful to take photos that wouldn't frighten the folks back home.....they were already pretty worried about our safety and we didn't want to add to their worry. Most photos were of groups of us and our friends in some relatively safe moment or in the rear on stand down. Most field shots were pretty generic.... here we go getting on or off boats or choppers. Here we are on a break from humping. Here we are playing with the kids that always seemed to find us. When you see online some dead body photos they are generally from some rear echelon jerk who got them from God knows where to send home as though to suggest he was near some "action". In our albums with thousands of photos there is only one ...in Jerry White's photos... that is said to have been taken while slinging lead with the VC or NVA...but no dead bodies and gore in it. It's not like there wasn't any blood and gore.... we just didn't need a photo to remind us and we sure didn't want to share it with the home folks.

The instamatic used 126 film cartridges. The 126 produced a negative smaller than the more standard 35mm negative. I'll attach a scan of two negatives...one 126 and the other 35 in a film negative holder.

Some people had better cameras than the cheap point and shoot Instamatic, but they must have been real careful if they went to the field with them. Too bad there weren't any waterproof pocketable digital cameras in those days. On the other hand....maybe not. We were more particular what we took photos of when we only had a dozen shots at any one time.

[Delta75]

Great memories...not sure what happened to mine.

[Niner Delta]

I remember a lot of guys carried these, I didn't carry one and looking back I wish I had......

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