Because the Bencini Comet shoots vertical half-frame images, I can fit two per slide in this gallery.
This late-1970s Fiat 124 Sport Spider won’t be getting a restoration.
Since old film cameras (that aren’t Leicas or Hasselblads or other looks-hip-on-a-shelf hardware) tend to be very cheap nowadays, I have a large stash of them from the 1890s through 1970s, ready to go on junkyard-photography expeditions at all times. I have a special affection for cheap snapshot cameras from the middle 20th century, be they from Japan, Illinois or New York. Naturally, I had to obtain a cheap Italian camera and use it to document the demise of a cheap Italian car. Here we go!
Like scooters, cheap Italian cameras looked cool in the early 1950s.
The Bencini Comet II camera came out around 1951, and it used 127 roll film (which is much larger than 35mm film but not as big as the 120 film used by most of my old cameras). The Comet II’s lens retracts, making the camera pocket-sized, and the half-frame design means that Comet II shooters got 16 portrait-format photos from a roll, instead of the usual eight landscape photos obtained by typical 127 cameras. Unusually for a cheap point-and-shoot camera with a fixed shutter speed and all-but-useless viewfinder, the Comet II had a focusing lens.
The C.M.F. Bencini camera company was based in Milan, of course.
It’s a nice-looking camera, not nearly as solid nor as capable as Michigan’s brick-shaped Argus C3 (but who cares?), and it came from Milan, home of Versace, Gucci and Armani. I knew that it would be perfect for photographing a junkyard-residing Fiat 124 Sport Spider, another very affordable bit of good-looking Italian design.
This late-1970s Fiat 124 Sport Spider won’t be getting a restoration.
My local Denver-area yards stock a few 21st-century Fiat 500s now, but I felt that the 124 Sport Spider better suited the Bencini Comet’s abilities.
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