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JStarStar

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Poking around in a box of old rocket stuff...

camroc.jpg


:D :D

Next to its more youthful descendant... :D

camrocastro.jpg
 
It is a vintage Estes Camroc. Single shot black and white picture, very special disk shaped film. From the.... I believe late 60s / early 70s?

*Quite* the collectors item.
 
If it is functional, you can probably fund your current endeavors with a dip into ebay...

I saw a working one go about a year back for aboyut $300.

Now I want to see an Oracle and Cineroc side by side.


A
 
Here is mine on the delta launch vehicle. The center section is removable with the film disk inside. I have a replacement center section with film loaded sealed in the black plastic bag that it came in.
 

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WOW!! What a blast from the past. Quite a piece of history you've got there!
 
Oh, I'm sure it's functional - at most all i'd have to do is replace the little rubber band that trips the shutter. The trigger string is still in good shape, so I am sure it works fine.

Now, to actually take photos with it, I'd have to hand-cut some 35mm film in a darkroom to fit in the film compartment, then probably hand-develop it myself.

All in all, probably wayyyyy more trouble than it's worth at this point, but it is fun to at least look at it... :rolleyes:
 
Cool! I had one back in 1969! One flight it worked & one flight it did not!:cool:
OH... & now it must still be in orbit! Went at a 90 deg angle & out of sight! I still see it doing it!
Bet I got a great shot to!!!!!!!
 
Here are a couple of (poor) examples of pictures that I took with the Camroc way back when dinasours roamed the neighborhood...

https://jflis.com/hobbies/rocketry/photos/13-mar-01/camrocpix01.jpg

https://jflis.com/hobbies/rocketry/photos/13-mar-01/camrocpix02.jpg
In this second one, you will notice a round circle in the upper left. This was a small dent in the negative that I beleive was there to provide a place for you to handle the negative while processing (every one I ever saw had this). As luck would have it, that's *my* house, right *on* the dent... LOL
 
Originally posted by jflis
In this second one, you will notice a round circle in the upper left. This was a small dent in the negative that I beleive was there to provide a place for you to handle the negative while processing (every one I ever saw had this). As luck would have it, that's *my* house, right *on* the dent... LOL

The dent in the negative was there so that you would know which side of the film faced the lens. You needed to load these in the dark so you couldn't look to see which side was coated.
 
Jim

your shots have that vintage spy-plane look so popular in the sixites. Aren't those the photos the CIA used to prove Russian missles were moving into your neighborhood?
 
The film for these was sold two ways.

First way was in "pre-loaded" canisters that you got a credit for when you sent them for development.

Second way was in light proof envelopes. The envelopes had two pockets. One pocket had 4 or 6 (don't remember which) unexposed film discs. The other pocket was for exposed discs.

In the dark, you would take the exposed film disc out of the canister and put it in the "exposed" pocket and take an unexposed disc and place it in the canister. The dent in the film disc was there to tell you which way to put the film into the canister. When the "unexposed" pocket was empty and the "exposed" pocket full, You would send the envelope in for development.

Most people using the second method would buy a couple of pre-loaded canisters so you could have extras. Loading the canisters wasn't something that was easy to do at the field.
 
I sold mine on Ebay...it just was too fragile to save.

I thought the longer I stored it the worse it would get!
 
Has anybody had any luck with the new Asto Cam? I just purchased one and was interested in the quality of the shots.
 

Holy moley. I'll probably put in a bid ... the only people in the world who would have any use for the film canisters would be somebody with a serviceable Camroc, and there can't be too many of us left... ;) So I doubt it'll turn into a big-money bidding contest...

Heck, I have developing equipment - tanks, reels, canisters - somewhere else in my attic, I could develop the film myself just for the fun of it.


I have an Astrocam, but to tell ya the truth, I haven't been able to open the dang film compartment! there's a button that seems to be stuck. I'm sure I'll get it if I devote some time to it - it's just something that has kind of slid to the back burner of my priority list.

From the samples I've seen, the Astrocam takes fairly decent, not great, pic. Anybody have any others they'd like to post?
 
Originally posted by BobH48
Loading the canisters wasn't something that was easy to do at the field.

I saw people fumbling around with their camera pkgs and new film, inside those dumb black bags, trying to do things by 'feel.' After seeing how well that worked I had absolutely no desire to try it myself.
 
I forgot to mention that back then I could not aford the Estes film, so I got a roll of tri-x pan 400 B&W film & cut my own film, worked rather good too!
 
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