6cm x 6cm

Interesting thing. I blogged Anupam's photos below. They were taken with a Brownie. My mother's Brownie is sitting on a shelf behind me. Many of my childhood photos were taken on that camera. I saw them again recently and was surprised by how much detail is visible in many of them. I should scan a few for interest. My mum has many photos she took while youth hostelling and cycling with friends in the 1950s, also taken on that brownie camera, so it wasn't a new camera when she took shots of me and my kid sister in the 1960s.

What's interesting me more at the moment is that when she used that camera, it was still a fairly commonly-seen model. It wasn't a "toy" camera - it was just an ordinary camera. It has one shutter speed and a waist-level finder and takes 127 film (4cm x 4cm). The sort of camera ordinary people would have used in many places. Not new technology then but maybe no more unusual than a family having a ten year old car or a ten year old washing machine today.

So when did so many of these cameras become toys? Today's Holga wouldn't have been cutting edge in the 1960s, but many people then were using simple compacts which might now be seen as toys but were then seen as average family cameras, the way a simple Canon or Olympus might have been seen as a family camera ten years ago and a 5mp digital camera would be seen as a simple sort of family camera today (ignoring the fact that everyone in the family has a mobile with a camera built in).

So when did the "toy" epithet appear? Who decides? Is the bicycle of the 1960s a toy bicycle? Is a 1960s VW Beetle a toy car? Is the mirror (or chair or crockery) you inherited from your parents a toy mirror?

Is an IBM 286 with WordStar and MSDOS a toy computer? I'm inclined to say yes. But the VW isn't a toy car, despite today's turbodiesel Beetles being so far beyond the Beetles of the 1960s in fuel economy, speed, emissions... It's an interesting perspective.

Take Leica's M3. I have what I think is an awesomely good film SLR: Nikon's F75. It was cheap, it meters perfectly, it's lightweight, reliable, does everything for you or does some of it or can be purely manual. It can use AF lenses or P lenses, does PASM, flash, spot... All the usual stuff. Does that mean a Leica M3 is a toy camera?

Is it a toy because you'd be embarrassed to be seen with it? Is saying something is a "toy" a way of excuising yourself for being somehow "uncool"? A sort of inverted snobbery? If it's not a "classic", is it a toy? If your 1960s car is a Hillman or a Simca instead of a VW, is it a toy? (Actually, Simcas were quite classy...).

So is the Brownie or even the Holga a toy or a camera? I've commented on photo.net somewhere that I was surprised by the Holga - get it right and it can take remarkably good pictures. Which is probably why people use them - they do take good photos. But what makes one obsolete product a toy and another obsolete product not a toy? It's an interesting question and comments would be appreciated.