Another interesting camera from the early 126 Instamatic camera era, the Kodak Instamatic 500 camera from 1963. This camera is one of the top of the line Instamatic cameras out there. This camera features a proper light meter in the viewfinder with a needle to indicate the proper exposure. The meter itself is not through the lens of the camera, rather it is the honeycomb pattern next to the viewfinder, the meter is analog and does not require batteries to operate and takes a light reading on the whole scene, which can cause problems if the subject is backlit.

The view finder is not through the lens either, but is very accurate when using the bracket guide for subjects that are closer to the lens for framing. To focus the user needs to have an estimate of the distance from the film plane to the subject in feet or to use the preset focus settings market on the bottom of the focus ring: portrait (4 feet), group (about 8 feet), and landscape (20 feet to infinity); these are also marked with a detent that is felt when turning the focus ring to one of these settings for quick focusing in the field.

This camera also features completely manual exposure control, with a f/2.8 to f/22 aperture and shutter speed control ranging from 1/500th of a second to 1/30 of a second with a bulb mode for long exposures. This camera also features an interesting addition of a modern style hot shoe and does use X-Sync for the flash so it can be used with a modern xenon flash. The ASA/ISO setting is controlled via the automatic ISO feature on 126 cartridges with a small notch that is used to indicate the speed of the film inside, similar to how DX encoding would be added to 135 film cartridges later on.

Taking photos with this camera is wonderful, the all metal body feels good to hold and the controls are easy to use. The camera itself has a very timeless design, when I took this camera out with me to an event at the college I used to work at, a couple of friends thought I had one of the newer mirrorless digital cameras. Like most cameras with all manual controls it does require you to slow down and think more about your shots and exposure settings, as well as when to use a speedlight, though that itself is most of the fun of shooting an older camera.

This particular photo was taken with my Nikon FG using a 50mm lens that was shot at f/1.8 as a long exposure using the table to steady the FT2 and a remote release cable on Kodak T-Max 400 for a finer grain. The photo itself was taken sometime in January of 2018.