Tedium - Point, Shoot, and Forget 📸

Today in Tedium: It took us about a hundred years to turn film processing (in most cases) from something that took a day or longer into something that was basically instantaneous. The fact is, while photography is a high art for a significant number of people, the masses wanted something simple that minimized the pain of taking photos—because they cared about the pictures more than the camera. They wanted something … well, disposable, that could “disappear” when they were done with it. The result of this need, the disposable camera, gave the film industry a real kick in the pants just before the digital camera took hold. Today’s Tedium breaks down the disposable camera, which is older than you’d guess. — Ernie @ Tedium

Today’s GIF comes from a commercial for the Kodak FunSaver Pocket, a device that went out of its way to not call itself “disposable.”

The Ready Fotografer. (via the Smithsonian Institute’s History of Photography collection)

The world’s first disposable camera predated the original Kodak camera

The word “disposable” implies many things about cameras and other similar devices, but often, a few key elements are at play.

First off, the camera must allow for the shooting of a photograph at a low cost, one that would not break the bank. It’s intended for people who don’t always want to carry a camera around, but sometimes have a need for one. The camera must be inexpensive, but usable. And, most importantly, when you’re done using it, you need to have pictures, and you must not have a camera.

Given that description, the first camera to fit that bill is the Ready Fotografer, a device that dates to the late 19th century. An early pinhole camera complete with glass plate, the Ready Fotografer’s claim to fame was its ability to take decent-quality photographs using a combination of cardboard, paper, and glass, despite having a cost of just 25 cents, a far cry from the $50 that many handheld cameras went for during the 1880s and 1890s.

It also had a business model that went beyond the disposability: You could technically develop it yourself using the dry plate, but you could also mail the device to San Francisco to have someone else do it for you.

Sending a camera in the mail to have someone print your photos—that sounds pretty crazy to think about today, doesn’t it? It turns out, though, that this was the system that many disposable camera systems used.

A 1988 article in Popular Photography by camera historian Eaton S. Lothrop, Jr., does a thoughtful job of pointing out how this basic idea of sending cameras in the mail was a major driver of consumer photography—both in disposable form, and (on a concurrent track) through the use of “returnable” cameras.

Some of the earliest examples of single-use cameras used this tactic—including the “Picture Box,” a 1940s camera made of thick cardboard, and the “Photo-Pac,” which had a plastic inner-lining, the first of its kind for a single-use camera.

The Photo-Pac, with its inventor, Alfred D. Weir. (via Flashback Dallas)

The Photo-Pac, which could be had for around $1.50 in 1940s money, was designed to be bought at a store, used, and dropped in a mailbox—after you added the stamp directly on the packaging, of course.

(Its inventor, Alfred D. Weir, patented the device in 1951, though he never once called referred to the camera as disposable or single-use in his patent, though it worked basically the same way.)

Mail processing was a common theme of early consumer camera schemes. It even drove uptake of the original Kodak box camera from 1888, which was considered a returnable: fill up the camera with photos, pay $10 to mail the camera, and you get back both the camera—complete with fresh film—and your photos. (Of course, $10 was no small sum in 1888.)

In many ways, returnables like the Kodak worked similarly to how Netflix’s original DVD service worked. You have a fun day when you take a lot of photos, you send the photos in the mail, and eventually you get your shots back, with no clue how any of them looked at the time except your memory.

Disposable cameras, which had a model somewhat closer to Redbox (or, really, let’s be honest with ourselves, Circuit City’s DIVX), had this same basic feature, but they also had something else: They were lightweight and designed to get out of the way as soon as you were done with them. To put it another way, the pictures always were the star of the show—never the camera.

The Kodak FunSaver Sport, a later model of single-use camera. (Steve Harwood/Flickr)

Kodak didn’t really care about disposable cameras … until a powerful competitor did

Disposable and reusable cameras grew in uptake in the 1970s, with name brands such as Technicolor talking part in the field, and a wide array of startups offering their takes on the miniature camera.

But mainstream camera companies, like Kodak, had tried pushing things in the direction of cameras that weren’t necessarily disposable, but very tiny, making them easy to carry around even when you weren’t thinking about it. Kodak’s cartridge-based 110 film format, along with its later disc format, played a key role in the growth of the tiny camera.

(It also helped that Kodak effectively had a monopoly on the amateur photography space and was frequently sued on antitrust grounds during this period.)

But Kodak’s decades-long decision to ignore the disposable camera space ultimately became untenable for one reason: Fuji. In 1986, the world’s second-largest film-maker got into a market that had been relegated to niche players, suddenly giving the idea mainstream recognition.

Reports of the time suggested Fuji was playing off a broader trend in Japanese culture toward disposable goods, but the success of its camera—even if it wasn’t as good as a full-fledged camera and came with a bunch of limitations—nonetheless meant that the disposable camera was about to become a mainstream phenomenon in the U.S., too.

Kodak had to get into the disposable camera space, because if it didn’t, it threatened to lose the upper hand in the consumer photography market it had long fostered. Some startup inventing a tiny camera that cost 65 cents was nothing; it could argue that the quality wasn’t very good and that the competitor was destined to fail. But Fuji was the Toyota to Kodak’s Ford; the competition between the two companies was high in the ’80s, and Fuji was very likely to succeed with disposable cameras.

In a 1987 UPI piece discussing the introduction of Kodak’s Fling camera, industry analyst Eugene Glazer basically said as much, though in the same piece Kodak denied such strategic thinking.

“What I think is apparent is Kodak’s desire to preempt Fuji’s announcement,” Glazer stated. “That’s part of what we’ve been seeing for the past few years now. It’s kind of like they’ve vowed never again to allow Fuji to beat them.”

The Fuji Smart QuickSnap Super Slim, the smallest single-use film camera ever made. (Steve Harwood/Flickr)

Kodak’s Fling, at $6.95, cost less than Fuji’s $10 Quick Snap, which represented the Japanese company’s introduction to the American market, but that lower cost came with lower quality; the Quick Snap offered full 35mm film, while Kodak’s initial offering was a 110 format camera.

Soon enough, these cameras would be everywhere. Just as Polaroid instant cameras did, they very much defined consumer photography in the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s.

Part of the reason, as New York Times reviewer Andy Grundberg wrote at the time, was their intended audience: “In short, the Fuji disposables seem well intended as emergency point-of-purchase items, and chances are you’ll be seeing them not in camera stores but next to the postcards and T-shirts at concession stands wherever scenic wonders are sold.”

They also were sold at drug stores, at superstores, and at supermarket checkout lanes, just like two other icons of ’80s disposability, the Bic razor and Bic lighter.

It was promoted at the time as a new idea—and some elements, like the use of 35mm film, certainly were new additions to the equation. And the cameras could be dropped off at the same camera shop where you got all your other photos developed, necessary due to the then-prevalence of one-hour photo shops.

But in many ways, it was a success story about 100 years in the making. It set the stage for something even more disposable: Digital pictures. (It might have even made Kodak a bit lazy and complacent in the process, but that’s a story for another time.)