Last week, I shared some wrecking-yard film photographs taken with a 39-cent miniature camera from the 1930s, the unobtainium film for which required me to build a device to cut down 120 film into UniveX 00 film. I have many cameras that take 127 film, the last source of which just dried up, and so I tore apart an unfixable Kigawa Kōgaku Tsubasa Semi camera, added X-Acto blades, and converted it into a slicer that will cut 127 film out of 120 film. Naturally, that meant that I needed to take my newly-obtained Vest Pocket Autographic Kodak (also known as “The Soldier’s Camera” for its ubiquity among troops of the Allied Powers during World War I) to my local wrecking yards and try out some cut-down Kodak Tri-X film.
These old IHC pickups still show up at U-Wrench yards.
As you can see by the damage along the top edge of the photograph above, my 127 film cutter still needs some fine-tuning. This Vest Pocket Kodak should not be confused with the slightly later VPK Model B that I used to shoot wrecking yards over the summer; today’s VPK is the same version used by hundreds of thousands of American and British soldiers in the trenches of France and Beligum.
