Bought by my father in 1937 for his first voyage as a junior officer, it was passed on to me in 1956 when he upgraded to the Box Brownie.

Dad, 23 yrs, aboard the oil tanker 'Edwy R Brown', 1940 (a ship later sunk by a German pocket battleship)

My mother bought him the Brownie box camera because the pictures taken by this camera were 'so small'. She didn't understand (nor can she to this day) that the 'small' pictures they were getting was because they were being sold contact prints. (Why contact prints? Presumably so that no enlarger was needed. Contact prints were simple and cheap, whereas enlargements were labour intensive and expensive. It's hard for us to imagine how costly photography was in the '50's (or before) now that we're paying as little as 7p for a colour print. How the economics of photography have changed.)

Despite the smaller negative, this was the better camera, having a doublet lens as opposed to the Box's single meniscus lens. Very obvious now when photographs from it are scanned is that, despite twice the enlargement, it has better definition as well as almost no vignetting, whereas the box has both considerable vignetting and poor edge definition. Still, to this day, my mother thinks that the Box Brownie is the better camera - for which she paid 'a lot of money': £2 6s 5d (which included the 25% tax on a 'luxury item'), equivalent to £111 now.

my sisters and Teddy and me, 1955

The irony is that, by the '50's, he was a highly paid Trinity House pilot, so could easily have afforded any of the quality folding cameras, much less a simple Zeiss Nettar or Agfa Isolette. Unfortunately they were just not interested in photography and to spend £10-12 or so on a camera was unthinkable. (Although, to be fair, we must bear in mind that '£10-12' was a professional wage at this time. An agricultural labourer's wage in 1956 was £7/1/- for a 47 hour week)

(pictures shown are the actual 127 contact prints: 2 1/2" x 1 5/8" when viewed on a 17" monitor)

click here to see photographs from Dad's wartime voyages with his VP127 :