High-quality 110 film camera visits the junkyard

I’ve been bringing film cameras from the 1900-1966 period to wrecking yards for a while now, and most of those have used big 127 or 120 film, also known as medium format sizes. 110 film is tiny stuff, a cartridge-based film that became popular during the 1970s and remained relevant into our current century. Most 110 cameras were cheapo point-and-shoots, and I’ve taken a couple of those to document wrecking yards: a bare-bones Velveeta Cheese promotional camera and a laughably minimalist Kellogg’s Corn Flakes camera that started life as a cereal-box prize. That was interesting, but now it’s the turn for a 110 camera that was an expensive, high-tech jewel in its time: the Canon 110ED 20.

The 110ED has adjustable focus and aperture, and the lens is a 5-element all-glass assembly instead of the usual one-piece blurry plastic piece. The f/2 aperture allows for low-light and tight depth-of-field shots, and there’s even a date-stamp feature (sadly, it’s good only from January 1, 1974 to December 31, 1984). This was a very, very good pocket camera, and I’m sure some Late Cold War spies used the 110ED instead of the “traditional” Minox. Going from the VelveetaCam to the 110ED is like going from a Chevy Chevette to a Mercedes-Benz 190E. And, like the 190E, the depreciation on the 110ED has brought prices down to very reasonable levels.

The 110ED did a great job of capturing the ambience on a cold, sunny day in a snow-covered Colorado wrecking yard. When you consider the tiny size of the images it captures on film (see the diagram, above), the technology Canon packed into this dense little device is very impressive. Come to think of it, I use 21st-century digital Canons for my race photography as well.

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