I am almost at the end of my trip back to Yorkshire for the summer. I had some cameras waiting to play with and some destinations I wanted to visit. One destination was the Science and Media Museum in Bradford. There was a great collection of cameras from many eras, there were many bakelite cameras. I had many of the cameras on display and some similar ones, but I realised I didn’t have anything like the bakelites or box brownies. So I decided to go on eBay and find one. There were plenty to choose from, I just chose the cheapest.
As I was playing around with the camera my father said, “oh, that is like the cameras we had when I was little.” That isn’t surprising as my father was born in 1943, a war baby, and the Envoy was produced from 1953 to 1960.
There is absolutely nothing to the Envoy. The shutter always fires, no cocking it. There is one speed…no idea what it is, probably 1/100th or 1/50th. The inside of the camera comes out when unlocked, you can see steps on the sides that stopped internal reflections. There is a red window to let you read the film numbers when winding. There is no cover for this window. On the front of the lens is the phrase, “For faces pull out, for places push in.”
There was also mention in the advert of “some” used film. There turned out to be 4 rolls of expired 120 from around 2000. I loaded in a Kodak T400 CN, which is a C41 process black and white film, cool. As it was expired I thought the 400asa would be perfect as I suspected this camera was built to take 100asa or less due to what was available at the time.
After taking a few shots in my house, I went on a trip to Saltaire. It seemed like a perfect location to try this old camera. Here are the images I got from the film.
It is definitely not an inside camera, but surprisingly good for outside. As there is no focusing all you have to do is frame.
I also took my Bronica with me. I noticed a few of my other shots showed a slow light leak on this camera. As I was in the same country as the camera I changed the seals. Here are the shots from that camera.
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