Barclaycard Visa Camera
| ||
| ||
|
The Barclaycard Visa Camera is a promotional 35mm plastic toy camera given out in the UK in the 1980's. It is similar to the Time Magazine Camera but features a plastic Optical Color Lens rather than the glass lens of its US counterpart.
The lens is commonly seen on some Trashcams.
It has a fixed focus lens with 4 aperture settings on the lens barrel (f/6 to f/16) which also match to a 4 weather pictograms (sunny to cloudy) on the other side of the barrel. The film plane is curved. It has a basic viewfinder with no markings. The film compartment is opened by pulling up the rewind knob.
The plastic used is now reported as quite brittle, and on the one pictured the film rewind sprocket broke on loading.
Barclaycard later issued a promotional Barclaycard compact camera, a 35mm viewfinder with built in flash. Unit is marked as having Red Eye Reduction & Close up features.
Barclaycard Visa Camera Specifications
- Lens: 50mm Optical Color lens Auto fixed focus 1:6
- Focus: Fixed
- Shutter speed: in region of 1/100 to 1/125
- Aperture: 4 settings f/6, f/8, f/11 and f/16 on lens barrel with pictograms on otherside
- Film counter
- Hotshoe flash
- Tripod mount point
- Production: Made in Taiwan R.O.C marked on base
Barclaycard Compact Specification
- Lens: 29mm Asperical lens 1:5.6 (3 elements)
- Fixed shutter speed
- Built in flash with red eye reduction
- Use 1xAA battery for flash only
- Close up setting: 0.6-1.2m
- Provided with Roll of Agfaphoto Vista 400
Links
- Barclaycard Visa Camera on Gary Benson's inauspicious.org site
- The Optical Color Optical Lens Group on Flickr listing other examples of cameras with similar lens
