Making a shiny new camera from a sad old Kodak Disc 4000

I was planning on trying a format I have never tried before, the Disc format.

But the Disc camera I have... let's just say it looked a little lame. Not only that, but everyone I talked with except a few experimenters and risk-takers was being critical of my project to shoot Disc format...

Of course, when you see what the cameras look like, I can understand that the gear doesn't appeal to most.

So I planned to give it a new look, a look none of these usually boring cameras had ever had before. To make it a little more "wow", a little sexier to use and to be seen with.

By luck, I had just ordered some sample iridescent adhesive sticker samplers that I thought would do well and were the right size.

I went through the process described in my previous post about the Kodamatic, carefully measuring the protrusions of the camera's body, tracing cutting lines with the AxiDraw V3 and cutting them up with either a cutter and a ruler, hole punchers and an Olfa rotary cutter.

Only this time it was simpler, because the paper was adhesive, so there was no need to manually apply glue to any of the elements.

And after some effort, the camera had been reborn and was ready to be used:

In the process of upgrading this sad little camera, the parallels between this process and repairing old, classic cars became apparent.

I don't own car(s) but several "classic" cameras. The classic cameras, quite like classic cars, serve a purpose while paying a classy tribute to the aesthetics of the past. For many people, they are a "lost cause" and left to rot atop a junkyard pile.

And yet, someone with a vision, patience and skill can pull these machines out of the sad fate awaiting them, make them better than new with some TLC, and offer them some more years of use.

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Fabrice on Film

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