It was chilly and overcast in January on Saint Simons Island in Georgia, but that didn’t stop us from taking a walk on the beach. The world was basically black and white. Sand, sea, and sky didn’t differentiate. I didn’t need the small negative of a half frame camera to get grain, but it was the camera in my pocket.
I had recently picked up the Kodak Ektar H35 Half Frame Camera. It is light plastic point and shoot camera with a fixed shutter speed (1/100s) and fixed aperture (f9.5) aimed at Gen Z photographers. New to film, a lot of people experiment first with disposable cameras, which don’t give the best images, but are very light and easy to use. The H35 is trying to plug that hole in a very inexpensive way.
It is also a half-frame camera. Each image takes half the space that a 35mm image takes, resulting in more grain and twice as many images per roll. I got 72 or more shots on each roll of 35mm film: Ilford HP5 400.
Despite the lens being acrylic, it produced quite high quality images.
