Brownie Hawkeye Flash, 1949 - 1961

The Kodak Brownie Hawkeye is a Bakelite box camera that takes 12 6x6cm images on 620 film, made in the USA and France by Kodak, between 1949-1961. There were also examples labelled "Brownie Fiesta" and "Brownie Flash". The original design did not have a flash facility, but the Flash model was added in 1950 and called the Brownie Flash in France and the Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash in the USA. Earlier models of the camera have a metal film advance knob; later models have a knurled plastic knob.

The camera is compact, box-shaped, with a carrying handle on top and a winding knob to the photographer's right. The design aesthetic is a throw-back to the Art Deco era of the 1920's, with clean minimalist fluting on the sides and an attractively-designed front. This camera is the work of an Arthur H Crapsey, who designed other plastic box cameras with similar aesthetics such as the Kodak Brownie Bull's-Eye and the Kodak Brownie Star series, as well as some more advanced cameras for Kodak in the 40's and 50's.

The camera has a brilliant waste-level finder, which has a fairly similar lens to the taking lens and thus seems to provide a decent preview of the framing. The camera also features a switch (opposite the shutter-release, for symmetry's sake) which allows "bulb" exposure, though no tripod socket is provided to steady the camera during long exposure shots. The precise speed of the shutter (when bulb is not used) is not widely-known, and likely varies depending on the cleanliness of the mechanism and the strength of the spring, but it is commonly said to be between 1/30th and 1/50th of a second, slow enough that the photographer must have steady hands or brace the camera. As the camera has fixed settings, the only exposure parameter the user can change is film speed, with speeds 50-100 being serviceable in the brightest sunlight, with 160-400 being within exposure latitudes for overcast or shaded daylight shots as well. Unfortunately, the aperture is usually too small for existing-light photography indoors, even in well lit rooms at ASA speeds of 800 and 1600.

The set focus distance is probably actually somewhat inside of infinity, for the purpose of hyperfocus: the aperture is narrow enough that the practical depth of field extends from 10 feet to infinity, though the manual states that objects as close as 5 feet are in focus. This is only true in the loosest sense.

The flash contacts are of a type common to Kodaks of a certain era. The flashgun provided with the American version of the Hawkeye Flash is the "Midget," which is the same one sold with the Brownie Starlet, Brownie Starflex and Brownie Bull's-Eye. This is a side-mount unit that fires only M-sized bulbs. It must be attached without a bulb or without batteries. Otherwise, it will most likely fire due to accidental contact, waste a bulb and potentially injure the person holding the unit. Name variants of this flashgun exist.

Kodak also provided multiple other flashguns for the terminals on these cameras, sometimes termed the "Kodalite" flashgun mount. A standout example is the "Generator Flashholder," which uses a dynamo to charge an internal capacitor, allowing either an M-size or a #5 flashbulb to be fired without batteries.