Fotron 828 roll film camera from a LIFE ad
Toronto. Who ya gonna call when you want people in middle class America to know about your fresh egg and do some digging? LIFE magazine, that’s who! In the March 8, 1969 issue, a full page ad on page 19 touted this odd camera – sans price – and advised readers to send in the postage-free card, or if missing, send the ad’s coupon to Triad Corp down in sunny California for details.
Never heard of the camera? I had’t either. Turns out the features advertised were rather pricy. The camera was sold by door to door “salesmen” for “$150 to $300 and up” according to an old paper edition of McKeown’s price guide (nearing two decades old now).
The plastic camera used the 828 film in special cartridges to make one inch square negatives or transparencies. The camera was somewhat clunky and ugly looking but had fully automated workings, electronic flash, rechargeable batteries, etc. To many photographers, the fact that it was sold outside camera shops at wildly varying prices, and by cold calling door-to-door salesmen, marked the camera’s ill fated sales campaign as “the greatest photographic ‘rip-off’ of the century” – again quoting my old copy of McKeown’s. Today, internet information is just as unkind to this camera.
The title of this post is from Ghostbusters, a favourite film of mine, and was first used a couple of months back in a post on this site that talked about information sources for collectors of photographica.
