Haight Street, Focus Free

walker.jpg

A friend moved away a while back and gifted us a box of random stuff: some frames, a couple speakers, and a Vivitar "Focus Free" PN2011 camera. It’s a plastic 35mm point and shoot. I took it for a spin today on Haight Street with some nice 400asa Fuji film.

It’s a very “cheap and cheerful” kinda of camera. Fixed focus, no batteries, plastic lens. It doesn’t have the severe vignetting (or even basic exposure controls) of the Lomo LC-A, but it does have is a switch that flips it between panoramic and normal modes. Panoramic simply inserts little plastic flaps to crop down the image - I didn’t use it.

So far, so fun.


2 Comments

Well if this photo is anything to go by that’s a great little camera, I’ve seen them knocking around on ebay might have to pick one up. To say it’s focus free it seems to have done a good job of isolating the guy in this pic from his surroundings. Great colours too :)

Posted by catherine buca on 3 September 2007 @ 11pm

I’ve just rediscovered a plastic Hanimex Handy “Focus Free” 35mm in a drawer at work. It’s still got the lion’s share of a 36 exposure film inside that, I guess, was loaded in around 2001. I’ve decided to finish the film and see what comes of the expired film. The camera seems suspiciously similar to the Vivitar; it has the same panorama and normal settings you describe but also has a flash. I wonder if it could be based on the same internals? Really like the results you got with the Vivitar and the Lucky film.

Posted by Peter Asquith on 4 September 2007 @ 6pm