Bulky toy "Professional" camera - NK3030

[Akki14]

This will really add fuel to the fire on what is a toy camera.
I bought this off of ebay for £8 (including the shipping)

That's what it looks like compared to a holga.
It's a 35mm film camera. it has an automatic motordrive, a sizeable detachable flash (for certain definitions of "detachable" as it does have a springy hotshoe lead but it's not very long nor detachable from the main flash unit to replace with a longer lead)
Waist level view finder like a TLR

It has fixed shutter speed and fixed focus, happily touted as Focus Free. It has apertures (square ones!) ranging from 16-6.3. I'm not totally sure these work now that I look closer at them, especially the one stop down from f16 doesn't seem to cover up the camera base aperture much at all.
It has motorised rewind but no stop or lock on the back like I've previously experienced on motorised point and shoot cameras. This caused me to fog a large chunk of the beginning of the film because I thought I heard the leader flicking away inside the film cassette when it wasn't (arugh).

If anything it was worth it for the flash. Now we have a suitably cheap flash to go with our two Holgas. It has a pull out diffuser cover and can be tilted up and down and moved left or right (strange).
The pictures from the first roll of film seem pretty good. No worse than a normal point and shoot and maybe a touch better but I'd not go with that orange price sticker price of £199.99. Maybe I found it in the toys section of ebay as a case of sour grapes?

I wish I could find more information on it. I haven't even found anything helpful like a Made In ____ sticker. When I google I only get people misspelling "Nokia" or even more ebay auctions for these cameras. It would be nice if anyone had any knowledge on this beast. Will try to get some photos printed tonight from the camera too.

[jstraw]

Meniscus lens? Glass or plastic?

[Akki14]

Meniscus lens? Glass or plastic?

Your guess is as good as mine. Doesn't say anywhere on the packaging. i'd have to break the whole thing apart to find out if it was glass or plastic.

[Markok765]

I use a Metz flash on my Holga.
Would a one time use camera be considered a toy?

[JBrunner]

I'm glad to see it comes with an optical lens!!! Gotta love it!

[glennfromwy]

There are a variety of these. List price 199.00, they often sell for less tan a dollar. Meniscus lens behind a piece of glass. A friend of mine thought he really got a deal when he paid 40.00 for one of these things. He was so proud of it, he couldn't wait to call me to come over and look at his "treasure". I took one look at it, laughed like hell and asked him: "You didn't actually pay money for this thing, did you"? Well, that made him mad, but not as mad as when I showd him one on $bay for 3.00. Never saw that thing again.

[JBrunner]

It has the "tlr" viewfinder, but I'm curious, is the "rf" viewer functional as well?

[Akki14]

Not only is it an optical lens, it's a COLOR optical lens
yeah the corner viewfinder works too. The manual touts the waist-level viewfinder for those users who wear glasses. Funny, I wear glasses and I don't seem to have problems with viewfinders...

The front seems to be plastic, not glass so it's more like plastic covering plastic I missed out a photo of the lens cap which helpfully says CAMERA on the front, in case you weren't sure what it was.

[Antje]

Wow, that ergonomic grip design would at least be worth, say, two bucks to me! In comparison to, say, the Holga, which I find hard to handhold, being a nimble 1.80m woman. And a color optical lens, what more can anyone want?

Does the flash actually work?

Antje

[Akki14]

Oh yeah, the flash works fine. Has a little test button on its hotshoe attachment and everything. It's more adjustable than the flashes I have for my Nikon FG and Zenit EM. Head tilts up and side to side easily and it screws onto the Holga 120N tripod mount fine and since it's a very simple hotshoe attachment, the Holga doesn't have problems with it either. The flash head has a diffuser that pulls out to diffuse even more and it has a chart on it for film speed, aperture and distance in ft/m. I didn't notice any over exposed/washed out photos in my first roll of film out of it but I'm pretty wary of keeping at least 3ft away from anything when I'm working with a flash. Very nice recycle time of 10seconds too!

I'm beginning to think these things are quite neat, although not quite their sometimes asking price of 30GBP/$60. I don't think we did too badly paying 8GBP for it considering holgas cost 19GBP usually here.

I also like that it takes 4 AA batteries (two for the motordrive camera and two for the flash) as my much more modern point and shoot 35mm camera uses an annoyingly expensive lithium battery.