Jonathan's blog

This week I borrowed a Kodak Six-20 Brownie from Hana’s dad. It’s the least I can do to quickly scan the user manual in in case it’s useful to someone.

Kodak Six-20 Brownie manual

Whenever I buy old or hard-to-find things from the Internet I often like to look at the user manuals first. But it can often be hard to find them, and I’m grateful when other people take the time to scan or type out their product literature.

I recently bought a Conway box camera, dating back to the late 1950s. It came with a user manual, so it’s the least I can do to scan and reproduce it here. Hopefully it will be useful to somebody.

I’ve also linked the manual on camerapedia.org – a great resource for finding out about vintage cameras.

Coronet Conway manual

I was flicking through the user manual for my 1981 Canon AE-1 Program. Some of the pages are illustrated with sketches of two characters–a man and a woman–having discussions. In every case, the “stupid” woman is confused, has made a mistake, or doesn’t know what to do.

Her hero, a dashing young man, always comes up with the answer.

What's a woman to do?

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that today’s user manuals have simple labelled diagrams and bulleted lists of instructions.