Halina Zippy F Disc

coming soon - currently being shipped 

There's a lot to say about this process more than the camera I would say, in short, the process is non-existent anymore so obtaining even some images from this will be surprising, to say the least.

This camera is one of many that tired as a company to jump onto the disc film movement before the big computers hoping they would cement there position with the bigger league biting a big stake of the market to which it ended up very unsuccessful.

The real reasons that this was unsuccessful as a whole product is that well the cameras were cheap, and not very capable on choice or change in the sense of Isa, aperture or exposure within the image, this was polaroid with Kodak film. The disc film was a literal disc cut and made with 15 images around that get placed into the camera and shot the issues it had was the fact of its unique design and size, yes its, light and small but people had to sacrifice on dpi and size as the disc film had 10x smaller frame shots than 35mm images which didn't sit well with the photography community to well as that's where you lost control as well.

This product not only failed as it was a cheap product in itself but the fact to get this product developed many companies needed specific machines to do the job as the discs aren't flexible and are hard unlike film so specific developing machines would be needed or as many did at the time manually develop the film by hand which was a cost issue as well as time. Then the same with scanning the film size is so small that any small spec of dust looks huge and can actually cover the whole image and was almost impossible to get an image that didn't look like the ISA was stretched to the point it could shoot as the grain was so heavy. Overall it was the quality and accessibility that killed this product as it was well advertised but there wasn't much room for choice or movement on the images to work on which in turn placed it as a failure in the photography world. 

What I have done is obtained 3 discs that haven't been shot as of yet, the chances of even getting an image is slim but the process never the less will show how difficult and just not a feasible process the disc film was compared to 35mm and why it died out. The reason my chances are slim on obtaining an image is 1st of all does the camera work? if so could I even double expose an image if it needs more exposure before it moves onto next frame without my choice, as there's only 1 button on this camera and that shoot?

Before the arrival of the film, discs came to me I've read that the best chances of obtaining images are going down the safest route which is to develop the images in black and white rather than colour as the chemicals have an easier time working together on the development stage which I think I will resort too as to see how these images turn out and look as I think this is, to say the least, an interesting project and shoot to see how it pans out. 

If you would wish to do this yourself there are a few companies that still do this development but charge about £40 for developing and extra £10 for scanning and at the end of all that you don't receive the disc film back reason being unknown to myself but you usually don't get it returned. Which is a downside, fortunately, or rather, unfortunately, I have the experiment to test this out to see if this works still as a process and to see if this just what I should expect a rustic cheap look or something worse off than a brownie camera which in that day and time was listed as the 'poor man's camera'

Features: 
Simple as it gets has one button that's to take an image.
Uses disc film rather than 35mm.
12.5mm lens, f/4 stop.
It's small and compact enough so that it fits into your pocket its pretty much a different type of 35mm point and shoot but at a smaller shoot ratio being a disc film only giving 15 images that are 10x smaller than 35mm.

Price:
Purchasing cost - £2.99 
Current Value (2020) - £2-5