Kodak No. 2A Brownie Model B

The Kodak No. 2A Brownie Model B is a basic box camera from the early twentieth century. It was a simple, mass-market snapshot camera that put photography within reach of ordinary families. The "2A" in the name refers to the film size, not a model generation. It takes 116 roll film and makes 2½ × 4¼-inch pictures.

The body is a leatherette-covered cardboard box, thick and sturdy, with a fixed-focus lens and a single shutter speed. The shutter lever sits on the user's right-hand side, just underneath the landscape-orientation viewfinder window. You trip it to fire the rotary shutter at a fixed speed of 1/30. There's no focusing and no aperture adjustment. You point, frame and shoot. One source describes it as a simplified and improved version of the original No. 2 Brownie, designed to be more accessible to the masses.

The dates are genuinely fuzzy. Introduction year is given as 1907 by one source and 1911 by another. One eBay listing claims "made before 1924," and another title even says 1902. One source gives an approximate production span of 1907-1933 and an approximate original price of $6.75. No single authoritative record pins down the exact timeline, and the conflicting claims likely reflect minor production variants or simple listing errors.

These cameras survive in reasonable numbers today. One dealer listing at Pacific Rim Camera Catalog shows a No. 2A Brownie Model B at $48.00. The condition notes describe a worn, torn, stained box, dirty finders, and bits of rust and oxidation on the body, though it is otherwise described as looking excellent. Street value is generally described as very low, and most sellers note these are for collection rather than regular use. 116 film is long out of production, though some users have documented adapting 120 film for use in these cameras.