Do you know the Kodak Instamatic camera? It’s a film camera introduced to the market about 60 years ago. The square-shape films dedicated to this discontinued model are no longer available in the market. It gives a pleasant look and feel with its neat and less-assertive design. Its structure by no means appears delicate, so I’m surprised to find how light it is when I actually take it in hand. Almost all of it is made of plastic, but it’s not cold to the touch. Rather, it gives easy-going and pleasant feelings.

Despite negative images plastic products present in modern society, such as environmentally unfriendly and cheap, Kodak products in the 1960s inspire quite positive feelings. Plastic is used for making products like cameras that are equipped with complex mechanism. Even when they are thickly shaped, they are actually light and compact. Back then, plastic was presumably a dream material. It feels like producers’ positive dream rubbed off on this camera.

Plastic was also used for making lenses for this model, which was the first trial of its kind in the world at that time. Curious to know how its photographic images came out, I took apart the camera and installed the plastic lens onto a digital camera. Then I took a picture of the dismantled camera using the digital camera equipped with a lens produced 60 years ago. This plastic product appears even more beautiful with its coating.

The old plastic lens produced a bit less transparent image, which made me feel I was watching a picture in a dream. It was like plastics brought about a fleeting dream, but the picture certainly conveyed a pleasant mood.

Takane Mitomi
Hybrid Design Dept.
Design Director