Kodak sold their first disposable 35mm camera in 1988 with the slogan “It’s the film that’s a camera!” This concept of a pick up and shoot camera that came ready to use was truly unique and their popularity exploded. These Kodak cameras and their competitors were truly disposable in every sense of the word. In order to develop the film the camera had to be practically destroyed and initially no recycling initiatives existed to reload the cameras and put them on sale again. Once exposed and developed the plastic, flash circuitry and battery were all sent to landfill.
Today, we are far more conscious of single use plastics and their disastrous environmental impact, although strangely we still have made almost no meaningful inroads in to eliminating the sheer mountain of unnecessary plastic that fills our day to day lives. In 1988 the true impact of plastic consumption and use wasn’t fully understood or taken all that seriously. A US senator famously awarded Kodak “waste maker of the year” in 1989 and this triggered an almost immediate change in approach. Less than a year later Kodak had redesigned their cameras to not only be reusable, they had also set up a huge recovery and recycling programme to take back disposables from photo labs. The name “disposable” then fell out of favour, replaced with “single use” to reflect the fact that they would indeed be used again.
No doubt this was a profitable move by Kodak and their recycling scheme saved them a lot of money that would otherwise have been spent on manufacturing new products. Innovative though their programme was, there’s no escaping the fact that it required a huge logistical effort, employing staff to recommission each camera and the cost of transporting cameras to and from their factory. Surely, a much better idea is to let the customer just… replace their own film?
Vivitar took all the good things from the disposable camera design such as their compact size, ultra low price and pre-loading of film and simply added a door on the back so users could replace their own when finished. Was there really any reason or excuse to use a single use camera after the release of the Eco 35? I bought one to find out…
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The Environmental Disaster of Disposables
Allow me to be blunt. There is no justification for single use cameras today.
The world does not need a supply of new, single use 35mm cameras. This is an indisputable fact.
Why? The second hand markets are flooded with 35mm point and shoot cameras which cannot be sold, no one wants them and they have asking prices of 99p or even less. Any of these thousands of point and shoots perform the exact same function as a single use camera but with the quite obvious and undeniable advantages of better ergonomics, higher quality optics and of course – reusability. What possible sensible argument can there be that in these circumstances it is justifiable to create new plastic based products which are absolute rock bottom quality and destined for the incinerators once used? It is utterly disgraceful that these cameras are still manufactured and sold today. If you really want film snaps, a holiday camera that you couldn’t care less about because you might lose it whilst sky diving… get on eBay and stop supporting needless waste.
Has there ever been a justification for the single use camera? That is harder to judge.
Sadly, no one can doubt the success of disposable and single use cameras. The market demanded millions of these cameras and manufacturers gladly obliged in extraordinary numbers. According to the source above, roughly half a billion disposables were sold in the 1990’s. They were everywhere from airports, stations, supermarkets and even sold as “accident kits” to be kept in gloveboxes to use in the event of an accident for insurance purposes.
To put that in some kind of context, the Eco 35 is a very small camera – about as small as it is possible to make a 35mm film camera and certainly no bigger than an average disposable camera. It measures roughly 11cm wide x 6.5cm tall x 4cm at its deepest point by the film winder, giving it a volume of 286cm3. Half a billion of these cameras would take up a space of 143,000,000,000cm3 or a mere 143000 cubic metres. Apparently, shipping companies have standardised on the 20ft container, which is 6.06m long and has an internal capacity of 32.85m3. You’d need at least 4353 containers to put half a billion disposables without any packaging in and that would fill a ship this big:
Even during the sweeping digital photography revolution, it was the disposable camera that steadfastly refused to die and even saw a couple of waves of resurgence as party cameras, because they were “retro cool” and sold by fashion outlets as an accessory or just for the sheer convenience as a holiday camera or similar. Smart phone pictures really did not achieve better quality than film until some time around 2012 and after.
I scanned through some old catalogues and the cheapest 35mm point and shoot camera I could find in 1989/90 was the Halina 160 at £14.99 (£36 in 2024). A disposable camera, depending on manufacturer, was anything between £5-£10 (very roughly £12 – 20 today) and did include development in some cases. Taking into consideration the cost of each film and development, the price difference wasn’t that substantial. Use five or more disposables and you would be roughy at break even with the cheap 35mm point and shoot option. What you gain in price you’d lose in image quality. It would definitely have been a balancing act for those who just wanted pictures, convenience and didn’t have plans or reasons to use a camera regularly.
As time went on, however, this became less convincing as an argument. By the late 1990’s, at the absolute peak of disposable sales, the price of a 35mm camera had fallen through the floor. A disposable was now £5, a reusable 35mm camera £8 and you could even get an APS camera including film for £17. The gap was pretty much closed in terms of price and the justification for using a throw away camera had become weaker.
Regardless, no manufacturer could ignore what was a monumental market segment and the business world gives zero defecations about climate when there’s profit to be made. There was a clear choice to make for many – join in and try to take a slice or find a way to compete. Vivitar did make cheaper cameras already and saw the obvious gap in the market which was to make the cheapest possible plastic fantastic camera, pre-load it with film just like a disposable but make it user reloadable. This was surely a best of both worlds and so the Eco 35 was born.
Eco design
Not a great deal was written about the Eco 35, at least not in the UK. It appeared in the news snippets of an issue of Amateur Photographer and once during a photo test for Ilford XP2 film Popular Photography in America, but that’s about all I’ve found. Obviously the Eco 35 with its zero features and controls didn’t make the most exciting of reviews so wouldn’t have sold magazines by being on the cover. A number were even given away by Amateur Photographer in the UK and I’m sure they probably were elsewhere too.
The Eco 35 has a fixed shutter speed of roughly 1/125 (as measured using a slo-mo camera), a single element plastic lens, fixed aperture (probably around F11), a nice big film advance winder and a counter that you might not notice unless you turn the camera upside down. The design can be described as “fun” and makes no pretence of quality. However, it doesn’t feel like it is about to fall apart in the hand. The plastic is definitely cheap but there’s enough rigidity to give you confidence that it’ll last for a number of rolls of film.
Arguably, the Eco35 is a lot nicer than your average disposable camera and certainly slips easily into any pocket. There are very few other design features to mention and certainly very little in the way of convenience. I worried that the shutter would trigger inadvertently when being carried but this only happened once and can be avoided entirely by not winding the film until the next frame is ready to be shot.
I cannot find a great deal of information about the design of the Eco35 but it cannot be a coincidence that it came out at almost the same time as the SupaSnaps Snappit and looked remarkably similar. If they didn’t come out of the same factory they definitely came from the same design philosophy. The choice to take standard 35mm film was a strong choice, rather than the 126 cartridges in the Snappit. I really do love 90’s design, everything was either colourful, totally bonkers shapes or both. I don’t think anyone celebrates the perfectly formed rectangles and subdued colour schemes of today in quite the same way.
The only downside of the Eco35 when compared to the disposables it was intended to compete with is the lack of flash. This was later rectified by the release of the Eco35H which came complete with working hot shoe for a flash and an accompanying flash unit. I have no idea how much the flash unit cost but it does feel a little bit like if you bought both and a set of batteries you’d have definitely spent more than a disposable and would probably be approaching the price of a bottom of the range point and shoot which rather negates the point somewhat.
This design must’ve been something of a hit for Vivitar. They were cheap as chips, came pre-loaded with film and were ideal for their intended audience and use case. Vivitar continued the design language and philosophy of the Eco35 into a number of later products, all designed to be fun, simple, handy holiday/travel cameras. Whilst the Eco35 firmly sold itself as an environmentally friendly alternative to a disposable, the marketing direction was quite different, yet equally clear with later cameras such as the EcoSun (or just Sun 35 depending on where it was sold), which was the most obvious name for a travel camera ever.
Related cameras which followed later included the “big view” camera which, you’ll be surprised to hear, had a massive viewfinder so that it was easy to use without taking your sunglasses off. Wherever these cameras were manufactured, other companies jumped on the bandwagon and commissioned similar models – none better than the incredible Boots Creature cameras which sold in Christmas of 1994 with massive spider, tiger, giraffe and caterpillar designs on the front. Hilariously, the “retro” scam artists on eBay are asking £50 for one of these now.
Using the Eco35
I loaded the Eco 35 with my last roll of Kentmere 400 and headed out to the Battlefield Railway, a short walk away from Bosworth Battlefield. Kentmere is not a film I’ve had a lot of love for despite the attractive and rock bottom price. I went through around twenty rolls and most were disappointing in terms of contrast, grain relative to similar films and the repeated appearance of strange white spots. This was a bottom of the fridge roll and if I’m honest I put it in this camera because I wasn’t convinced that anything worth looking at would come out. The only difference between this roll and the others is that I stand developed at 1:100 and on face value it seems to have made quite a difference to the appearance of the final images.
As I mentioned in my review of fairly equally matched Opus Prime, the true power and beauty of shooting film is revealed most when you absolutely abuse it. These cameras abandon all idea of exposure calculation, everything is fixed and you get what you’re given. The fact that a whole roll of visible images come out seemingly no matter what you did during the shooting process is nothing short of a miracle.
I shot the Eco 35 in all sorts of lighting conditions both indoors and out. ISO 400 seems perfect for these cameras and it meant I could even rescue an image taken indoors in really dull conditions, yet it didn’t blow out too badly in bright sunlight. Unlike the Opus which gave me almost an entire roll of usable pictures, the Eco 35 really did struggle when pointed towards the sun. Whether it was the lens or a combination of that and the compact camera design I’m not sure, but a lot of images that were backlit didn’t come out well at all.
This is an undeniably fun little camera to use and ergonomically it’s just right. With the Opus Prime I kept finding my fingers wanted to naturally fall in front of the lens, the Eco 35 on the other hand has a perfectly placed finger recess and no such mistakes were made here. Shooting is pleasant enough as the viewfinder is eminently usable and accurate even if it is on the small side. Clicking off a shot is reasonably quiet but you wouldn’t accuse it of being discrete in quiet environments, and especially when you start cranking the clicky winder wheel. Four quick quarter turns with the thumb and you’re ready for the next frame, simple and straight forward.
The frame counter is at the base of the camera and definitely serves as a rough guide only. When I thought I’d finished the roll I had around 4 shots still left to go. Having said that, it seems to be a feature of these simple point and shoots that you get more than 36 images on a roll, in this sense it’s as economical as it is possible to get with a film camera. This does mean taking extra care with development though, any mistakes with the start or end of the roll and you can very easily lose a frame or two.
I would describe the final images as “vintage” in their look. I can’t think of a better way of describing them, it’s what I’d expect to get out of a really old and primitive film camera. Close up shots are acceptably sharp, especially in the centre of the frame and the Eco 35 captures quite a surprising amount of detail up to about 3ft away from a subject. Wider shots are softer than warm butter in the corners, the shot above is a perfect example. If you like this kind of dream world effect then this is definitely the camera for the job!
Conclusions and learning
I cannot get over how stupid the idea of disposable cameras is. In that context, as far as I’m concerned, the Eco 35 is the greatest invention in the world. In all seriousness, Vivitar saw an opportunity and produced a product that for once achieved everything it set out to do. As a stand alone camera there is almost nothing you can say about it, it is as generic as generic can be for a turn of the decade camera from the 90’s. These cheap, fixed shutter speed, fixed aperture cameras had been around for ages and were largely all the same just with slightly different body shapes and different names printed on the front.
What Vivitar did differently was to go so brazenly after a massive market segment with a product that directly called out the waste involved in using single use cameras. Did they succeed? Probably not, there were certainly no news stories that I could find which proclaimed Vivitar as taking over the market and the overnight repentance of disposable manufacturers as a consequence. Some of this undoubtedly comes down to how cool and fashionable you feel walking round with the word “ECO” strapped to your face in public. That’s not to say the concept was a failure, it wasn’t and a lot was learned and can be seen in the later change of name to “EcoSun.” See, you can be holiday cool and environmentally friendly at the same time.
So does the Eco 35 have a place in modern photography? Artistically, for some people, probably it does. However I struggle to understand the need for cameras like this today. This, disposables and similar cameras all fall into the category of “deliberately crap” photographic tools and there’s only limited appeal before the novelty wears off. Why you’d deliberately seek out the worst camera you can find today is beyond me as you can pick up good quality cameras of nearly any type, form factor or feature set you desire for a few quid. If you want a compact 35mm point and shoot then why not pick up a nice auto focus model for £5 or less? Why purposefully seek this kind of camera out other than simply for the hell of it or to experience what it was like to use a disposable in the 90’s?
Still, anything is better than lowering yourself to the depths of shooting a disposable. Get a grip and shoot sustainably, buy one of the thousands of sad cameras looking for a new home on eBay and every charity shop ever instead.
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