Ad for Super-XX film for easy peasy (yeah, right) indoor and night photos
Toronto. The February, 1941 issue of Popular Mechanics came out when I was a little kid still figuring out when to use a spoon (not really). Six years later, I took a bus ride with the rest of my grade 6 classmates to visit a couple of museums in villages a few miles north of home.
I took along my trusty Baby Brownie and since I was shooting some photos indoors I also bought Kodak Super-XX film which was the fastest film around back then – and Kodak said it was great indoors and at night. Boy, what a disappointment! The outdoor photos came out just fine as usual, but the indoor shots where all sadly underexposed … and like any little kid, I wondered what I did wrong. Now I know …
I didn’t read the fine print! I believed Kodak when they said any camera could take indoor and night shots as easy as outdoor shots if it could use Super XX film (just like mine). Now, seeing this ad and reading the fine print, it says in paragraph ‘B’, “Use a couple of inexpensive Mazda Photo flood lamps in Kodak handy reflectors … Kodak handy Measure included“. Hmfff! tell THAT to a kid-sized budding photographer!
Anyway, here we are over seven decades later. Water under the bridge. The ad that brought this to mind is courtesy of my good friend and fellow photo-historian, George Dunbar. It’s George’s abundant curiosity that makes the history of our art so darned interesting.
