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Odd Piece of Plastic

EZ 35 Colors by Vivitar

By Jason Canavaggio

2 May 2008

In the late 1990s, just before I hit my teen years, I bought my first camera. At the time I did not even know how to load film into a camera. In fact the only picture I had taken was one of my brother on a Polaroid. Growing up in the middle of nowhere you get bored, so while walking through a store one day I saw this bright green hunk of plastic that came with a roll of film. $18 plus tax (today this thing would probably be only five dollars) and sometime later I had this thing all set up and ready to go.

Roughly a decade later I still owned this odd piece of plastic. I only assume that Vivitar called this camera EZ 35 Colors because that's the only other distinguishing mark written on the thing. It was probably one of those cheap plastic toy cameras they sold to make a quick buck, so needless to say if you try researching it, you will probably end up with nothing.

This is the most stripped down camera I have ever seen. It's entirely mechanical, so the only thing that requires a battery is the flash. It has a 27mm wide angle lens that's about the size of a dime. I often have people who know me ask why I'm carrying around a disposable camera when it's in my hands. Thus the explanation that it's not disposable it's just a cheap stripped down 35mm camera.

I will give this camera one thing; it's a tough little sucker. It has survived drops, having multiple peoples' bodyweight land on it while it was in my pocket, and can be pretty handy as a tripod if need be. This is my old stand by if I'm just wanting to make sure I have a camera with me to capture any action that might happen, basically that's the only thing it's good for, but I still love the thing.

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