My grandfather's Kodak Brownie Hawkeye has been sitting on a shelf for what must be 50 years. I learned recently that, although it was meant to use 620 roll film, it could use regular 120 film with a couple of small modifications.

Since the Brownie is a fixed-focus, fixed-aperture, fixed-shutter speed camera, I opted for a roll of Delta 100 and shot it outdoors. The film had expired in 2013 but considering that I had no idea if the camera even worked, I wasn't worried about the film quality.

I processed the roll and saw that, happily, there were images on the negative. Scanning revealed that the images were less than stellar, though. I had accidentally made two double exposures, since the film needs to be manually advanced and there's nothing stopping the shutter from firing when you forget.

Honestly, the lens is pretty bad. I was too close to the subject a few times, so missed focus.

Even when successful, the images are very soft and suffer from a significant distortion. This can be fun, but it's not something I'll often want to spend a roll of 120 film on. Still, it's a good dose of nostalgia using an old camera that had been resigned to the dustbin.