We are currently living in the age of digital media, everything we do we can almost always tie in how technology plays a role in the activity. This includes how we take pictures. I don’t have anything close to a professional camera, but I do have an iPhone. This device is how I take nearly all of my pictures and videos. I’ve shot concerts and music festivals and taken pictures with friends when we’ve gone out. However, during these events, I’ve always wondered if I am missing out on truly living in the moment. Am I truly experiencing something if I am viewing it through a screen? These questions led me to the decision to use a disposable camera for my recent trip to Salem. 

    About a week before the trip I purchased my first disposable camera at my local Walgreens, spending nearly thirty dollars on it (my mom said they used to be $1.50 when she was in college). The camera itself seemed to be made of plastic and the viewfinder is an “inverted Galilean-type plastic lens finder” (Target, n.d.). The camera is 2.5 inches (H) x 5.9 Inches x 1.4 Inches (D) and weighs about .25lbs. The camera brand and make is a Fujifilm Quicksnap, which was Fuji’s first disposable camera that had model features that allowed for usage in the day and night due to the built-in flash. (Wiki, n.d). Fuji was one of the first brands to ever create a disposable camera making its debut in 1986 (Wiki, n.d.).  These cameras grew especially popular in the 90s and early 2000s but have since died down as new digital technology has emerged. 

    I had never used this type of camera before so there were definitely a few hiccups along the way. The first was I didn’t know how to actually use it. I had thrown out the box the morning before we left for the trip and little to my knowledge the box had the directions on it. After about five minutes of my boyfriend and I standing in massive crowds and trying to figure out how to get it to work we eventually gave up and looked up the directions. First you had to scroll the film wheel to the right, then you line up the shot by looking into a tiny viewfield, and lastly you hold the button at the top of the camera until you hear the click (Bear and McClure, 2021). Once I learned how to actually use it, another issue we ran into was distance. With digital cameras or cell phone cameras there are options like zoom and refocusing the lens but with the disposable camera this wasn’t an option. Every image I took I could only be a maximum of ten feet away from. While this wasn’t a deal breaker or really that inconvenient it was just something that really stuck out to me. The last real “issue” or difference I noticed was that I couldn’t see what the actual pictures looked like. With a digital camera you are able to look back and see if you need to take another picture but with the disposable camera you don’t get that option. I noticed I was just taking a bunch of pictures of the same thing hoping that at least one of them would turn out good. I still don’t know if any of the images came out good since it takes three weeks for the photos to be developed. 

All this being said, I enjoyed the experience much more than I anticipated. The disposable camera was chunky so taking it in and out of my purse was a bit of a hassle, especially in the Salem crowds. This eventually led to me taking less pictures than I thought I would, and only using it to capture really important or truly beautiful images. With iPhones specifically you can take 100+ different photos and not feel any real connection with the images but with the disposable camera every picture felt like a moment captured in time. That’s another thing I noticed, I felt more connected to the world around me when using the disposable camera. I can’t explain the feeling, but there is something to pulling out this chunky box and having the person you’re with pose for you or having to stop in the middle of the street to make sure a picture is in focus. It makes you laugh and the moment just feels more real.

When looking back at this experience I can definitely say that I will be using a disposable camera again or maybe even look at investing in a film or polaroid camera in the future. I don’t have anything against iPhone cameras or typical digital cameras, I think they’re both really great tools and honestly phone cameras are just really convenient, but there is something to be said about using a disposable one. As I mentioned before there was a feeling of really living in the moment when using it. Taking the picture made just as good of a memory as what I was trying to capture. I was really able to connect and slow down when using the camera as well. Another thing I noticed was taking the picture felt like creating a souvenir rather than just a photo I could look back on. There was more depth and more of a story connected to the image than you typically would get.

I would never have thought that an object like a camera could create a feeling of liveiness yet when comparing both disposable and iPhone the disposable would win over and over again. The object itself created memories and I think that is my biggest take away from this. Before this experiment I couldn’t really place what Marie Condo meant by only having items that give you joy, but now I can say without a doubt that the disposable camera I used is one of them. 

References 

Bear, Crystal, and Eric McClure. “How to Use a Fujifilm Disposable Camera.” WikiHow, WikiHow, 9 Aug. 2021, http://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Fujifilm-Disposable-Camera#Taking-Photos.

“Fujifilm Quicksnap 135 Flash 400-27exp Camera.” Target, http://www.target.com/p/fujifilm-quicksnap-135-flash-400-27exp-camera/-/A-79898667?ref=tgt_adv_XS000000&AFID=google_pla_df&fndsrc=tmnv&DFA=71700000088114232&CPNG=PLA_DVM%2Ba064R000011uOSaQAM-Fujifilm_HolidayFY21_NovDec_Solo&adgroup=PLA_Fujifilm&LID=700000001393753pgs&network=g&device=c&location=9004843&gclid=Cj0KCQiA4b2MBhD2ARIsAIrcB-Tm3xZOJivUVnK0bCHFImgnC3lEoStULFmfXa4y3ye5ThR_DLAQcE4aAjhHEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds.

“Fujifilm QuickSnap.” Camera, camera-wiki.org/wiki/Fujifilm_QuickSnap.