The $7.00, Five Below Reusable Photo camera and its $7.00 film cartridge

For the readers not familiar with the American retail landscape, Five Below is a chain of stores selling “stuff” (cosmetics, candies, gadgets, beach towels, electronics) for really cheap, like $5.00 and below. Not eveything is under $5.00 – the reusable, waterproof film camera, and the b&w film it needs are both priced over that symbolic mark, at $7.00. There is a cheaper version of the same camera. Selling for $5.00. But I elected to spend two extra dollars to get the waterproof variant. It’s the same camera, simply inserted in a transparent waterproof shell.

While I was at it, I decided to splurge and also bought two 10 frame cartridges of Five Below’s 100 ISO B&W film. 10 (yes, ten) frames for $7.00. One roll for the Five Below camera, the other for my benchmark, the Minolta AF-C – an autofocus camera from 1982.

Research on the Web and on ChatGPT did not return any useful information about this film, but $0.70 a frame for a Chinese film of unknown provenance, it’s not exactly a bargain when B&H will sell you a 36 frame cartridge of Ilford’s excellent FP4 for less than $12.00.

It looks like Five Below are applying the tried and tested Gillette pricing technique – sell the razor at cost, and make a comfortable profit on the blades.

*The Five Below waterproof film camera, next to the Minolta AF-C – loaded with the same film.*

The Five Below camera is obviously not an original design. A similar fix focus, 28mm point and shoot camera has been sold (or given away) under various brand names in the past. The camera is almost totally made of plastic, as I doubt that there are more than three metal parts in it. At best a spring in the shutter mechanism. And two small metal rods to keep the door of the waterproof case in place. And not a single part is made of glass.

The lens is a 28mm f/8 piece of plastic (probably a simple meniscus). The shutter is calibrated to deliver 1/100sec snapshots. And, contrarily to all disposable cameras, this one has no electronic flash.

The Five Below film cartridge next to Fujifilm’s Acros II – Note that the leader of the Five Below film is cut straight.

Strangely enough, it does not look as lightly built as most disposable, single use, cameras. Loading the camera with Five Below’s film is surprisingly easy. Maybe it’s thanks to the unusual shape of the film leader. It’s cut straight, when every other roll of 35mm film I’ve seen is tapered. What works well for the Five Below does not work for cameras that expect a tapered leader, like this Minolta AF-C – I had to cut the leader to give it the shape of a “normal” 135 film.

Developing the Five Below film

The only indication provided is that the film has to be processed in D76 chemistry. No other direction is provided. Considering the film is very likely a respooled / unbranded industrial or cinema-derived film, I decided to develop the film for a longer time than what a usual 100 ISO photography stock would require. With my usual Tetenal Parvofin tabs at the “economy” dilution, I opted for a development time of 6 minutes at 26∘𝐶.

The cartridge is made of two half shells of plastic that are clipped together. Opening the cartridge to extract the film does not require a cartridge opener – I simply pried it open with a screwdriver (in a changing bag, obviously).

*Five Below 100 ISO B&W – the empty film cartridge.*

Compared to my usual Ilford or Kodak film, I found the film more difficult to spool on the Paterson spirals – it seems that the film base is made of a clear and rigid type of plastic (probably PET) rather than the triacetate used by almost all 135 film manufacturers – which could explain that the film advance is so stiff on the Reusable, and that I got involuntary double exposures on the Minolta AF-C.

Once developed, the film does not show any marking – the manufacturer will remain unknown – but contrarily to what I was afraid of, the processed negatives look OK, in particular those shot with the Minolta AF-C, which are clearly more defined than the negatives of the Five Below Reusable.

Five Below Reusable – Five Below 100 ISO Film – Sweetwater Creek Park

Two pictures taken from the same vantage point at the same time – the photo taken with the Five Below Reusable is dull compared to the image taken with the Minolta.

The total length of the film strip is 19in 1/2 (49cm), but unless you load the camera in a dark room and only lose one exposure to the loading process, it will be difficult to get 10 exposures out of the roll of film (I got 7 on each of the cameras, but I could have probably squeezed 9 exposures out of them had I been less risk adverse).

I also lost one exposure in the middle of the roll shot with the Five Below camera (the shutter probably did not fire), and one to a partial and totally involuntary double exposure on the Minolta (which is a very reliable camera, normally). The unusual stiffness of the film may have caused it, but I suspect that the real reason is that the film had not been spooled regularly.

Five Below vs Minolta

The Minolta AF-C is a fine camera. The film advance is smooth, the viewfinder large and accurate, with a clearly defined projected frame, and the 35mm f/2.8 lens is true to the premium positioning of the camera when it was new. The auto-exposure system and the autofocus did their job and the negatives are correctly exposed and as sharp as the film permits them to be.

The Five Below Reusable Photo Camera fared better than I expected. The viewfinder is poorly implemented (it shows you the angle of view of a 40mm lens, when the lens is actually a 28mm), and the word “resistance” was invented to describe the film advance ratchet wheel. Not a pleasant experience, but you still get usable negatives in the end. The negatives lack density – which clearly points to under-exposure. The camera has no way – manual or automated – to adjust the shutter speed or the aperture to the luminosity of the day, and on the day I took the pictures, the weather was overcast. The negatives are also mushy, the lens is definitely not a champion of sharpness: the image quality is low without being unacceptable, but there is no light leak and the frames are evenly spaced on the film.

As a conclusion

The “Five Below Reusable Photo Camera” looks cool in its pale blue color, and the little lobsters are fun. It’s deprived of a flash, and will only be usable outdoors, by good weather. On the beach, or practicing water sports. If you lose it or drown it, no big deal – you’ve only lost $7.00. Some of the issues I observed – the very stiff film advance, in particular, were probably caused by the film, and are not to be blamed on the camera.

I have no idea of the life expectancy of the camera – you will certainly be tired of it before it gets tired of you. Kodak, Ilford, Yashica and a few other propose much nicer reusable cameras (with a flash) for approximately $50.00, and a patient buyer will be able to score a very good motorized, autofocus compact zoom camera made in the nineteen nineties by Canon, Minolta, Nikon or Pentax for less than $35.00 (shipping and handling included) on their favorite auction site.

Lightroom settings with Five Below 100 ISO film

Left – the Five Below 100 ISO film reacts like “normal” B&W film – Right – there are better low budget options that this Five Below camera

The resulting images will be much better, and the price difference between the different models of cameras becomes negligible once you start considering that a photo lab will charge you many times the price of the Five Below camera to simply develop your first film and print 10 images.

As for the Five Below B&W 100 ISO film, in a good camera, it will deliver images which are not bad at all, with decent sharpness and contrast. There is no light leak, no dust, and all images are usable. But I can’t recommend it.

The PET base, those short 49cm strips, the absence of any film marking or processing direction, the straight cut leader, the same clipsable plastic film cartridges used by photographers spooling (not very well) their film at home, everything points to a low budget scrap recycling project. For the same price you can get a 36 frame roll of Ilford’s Kentmere 100. As such, this Five Below film is massively, obscenely, terminally overpriced. To be avoided.

The Five Below Waterproof case and the camera that goes inside. The pictures of this blog post were taken with the camera out of the waterproof shell – no need to add another layer of plastic between the scene and the film.

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*Minolta AF-C – Five Below 100 ISO – Sweetwater Creek Park*

The Minolta AF-C – an ultra compact Point and Shoot from 1983

Minolta, once a major camera maker – second only to Canon in terms of volume – was absorbed by Konica in the late nineties (correction: I was a few years off – the merger was announced in Jan 2003).

The newly formed Konica-Minolta entity left the photography market in 2006 – with Sony inheriting some of their camera and lens designs when they entered the dSLR market.

For the anecdote, the Minolta name is now used under license by a company distributing (very) entry level digital cameras, that – based on the horrendous reviews they get on Amazon – I won’t bother testing.

Sic transit…

An attempt by Minolta to compete with the premium ultra compact category - with a unique selling proposition: it's an autofocus camera. — *The Minolta case – the AF-C was presented like a precious object.*

In 1983 though , Minolta were at their peak. In addition to their bread and butter point and shoot cameras, they had decided to go after the market of photographers looking for an ultra compact camera of quality, and proposed a Minolta alternative to the Olympus XA, the Minox 35 EL and Cosina’s CX-2.

*The “shield” is up and the camera powered off.*

Like its competitors, the AF-C was extremely compact – it integrated a rather fast wide angle lens – a 35mm opening at f/2.8, and was devoid of an electronic flash (it was sold as a separate unit, to be attached to the left of the camera) or from any motorized film advance system. The AF-C’s unique selling proposition was its autofocus – all their competitors relied on zone focus (Minox, Cosina) or on a small rangefinder (Olympus) for focusing.

The AF-C’s unique selling proposition was its autofocus

On all those ultra-compact cameras the lens and the viewfinder are protected when the camera is not in use. In the case of the AF-C, a “sliding shield” protects the lens and the viewfinder when the camera is not in use, and has to be moved down to unlock the camera. Simple, and it works.

*Minolta AF-C – the “shield” is open and the camera ready to shoot.*

Today, the AF-C is not as sought after as the XA or the CX-2 (if eBay prices are an indication). And a derivative of the Cosina CX-2, the Lomo LC-A, reaches much higher prices. Why is it so? Probably because the AF-C is a totally automatic camera, with no ability for the photographer to adjust the settings. You’ll have to trust the performance of its autofocus – there is an AF lock feature to help with off-center subjects, but that’s all. A green LED is lit when the camera has set the focus on “something”, but you will only know what it was after you examine the prints, a few days (or weeks) later.

*Minimalist top plate – exposure and focus are automatic*

Similarly you’ll have to trust the CdS meter – a program controls the combination aperture-shutter speed, with no indication of what the camera has decided to do, and no manual override. In fact, the only thing that the photographer can set is the film speed – between 25 and 400 ISO. Considering that the meter operates between IL6 to IL17 – (1/8s at f/2.8 to 1/430s at f/17)- I would probably use 200 ISO film to cover my bases without risking reaching the limits of the shutter on very bright subjects.

*Two ways to shoot 35mm film with a 35mm lens. The AF-C is remarkably compact*

Another reason the demand for the AF-C is pretty low nowadays is that it does not operate without batteries (4×1.5v silver oxide batteries). None of its competitors does – all have electronic shutters – but in the case of the AF-C, even the non-motorized film advance is inoperative in the absence of batteries (the film advance wheel is locked). Which leads people to believe that the camera is dead, when it’s just asking for fresh batteries.

Atlanta, Inman Park Festival – Minolta AF-C – Kodak UltraMax

Shooting with the AF-C

Film loading is easy, if you are used to operating a fully manual 35mm camera.

As for shooting, there’s not much to say. You point the camera towards the subject, you press the shutter release button, and you expect that the AF-C will do the rest. Because you don’t have much to do beyond that.

a young lady seating at the table next to ours asked us whether I was shooting with a disposable camera

Oh yes, film advance is not automated, and the camera is too small for a conventional film advance lever: you have to turn the film advance wheel, like you would do on an old Instamatic. It’s making the same noise – and it’s intriguing for people who are not in the know: I was taking a few casual snapshots of my wife at the terrace of a cafe, and a young lady seating at the table next to ours asked us whether I was shooting with a disposable camera.

Fresh from the lab

I had this little camera with me when walking in the streets of Atlanta for the Inman Park festival a few weeks ago. It was loaded with Kodak UltraMax 400, not my preferred stock, but I thought it would be a better fit for the camera than my usual Ektar 100.

I was impressed by the sharpness and the contrast of the pictures

When I received the scans, I was impressed by the sharpness and the contrast of the pictures – which points to a good lens. I also liked the camera’s ability to freeze movement – the program controlling the exposure parameters seems to have its priorities in order.

As long as the subject is a street scene or the portrait of a human being, the focus is tack on. But if the subject is not at the center of the frame, or moving too rapidly inside the frame, or too small, the camera can not get the focus right. You should not use the AF-C to take pictures of pets (and of children who can’t stay in place).

I was not overly impressed by the colors though. It could come from the scanner of the lab, but I suspect that the camera had under-exposed most of the pictures. I used Lightroom’s “modern” Profiles to bring the tones to my taste, and the final results are not bad at all for a 40 year old ultra-compact camera. They have the 1980s minilab look that people seem to like at the moment.

As a conclusion

The Minolta AF-C is a nice little camera, very compact, and delivering good pictures if you keep it in its zone of comfort. The copy I was using was probably under exposing, and I would need to test it more thoroughly to find by how much.

But I’m afraid I won’t do it. Because I’m not really interested in spending more time with this camera.

We all shoot film for different reasons.

For me, the end result matters, of course, but the quality of the interaction with the camera is also an important factor – and shooting with this auto-everything little camera does not cut it for me.

The AF-C does the job but its approach to photography is ultimately frustrating – you know its automatic exposure and autofocus systems are relatively primitive, but there’s no way of knowing what they’re doing, let alone overriding them. And the long travel shutter release, the click of the shutter, the ratcheted film advance wheel, all give you the feeling of shooting with a cheap entry level camera.

the feeling of shooting with a cheap entry level camera

Shooting film has become seriously expensive – in the region of $1.00 per scanned image once you’ve factored the cost of film and processing by a lab. You can reduce the cost per picture if you process and scan the film yourself, but in this case you’ll be paying with your own time.

For that amount of money or personal time, I want the process of creating pictures to be enjoyable. Even if the pictures it captures are of good quality – the 35mm f/2.8 lens lives up to Minolta’s reputation – the AF-C feels too much like an Instamatic to my taste.