Kodak Six-16 Brownie Junior (1934–1942)

The Kodak Six-16 Brownie Junior is a box camera that Kodak sold from approximately 1934 to 1942. It is in the same family as the Six-20 Brownie Junior and shares its technical characteristics, but it uses the larger 616 roll film for bigger negatives. It made eight exposures per roll on 616 film. Images came out around 2½ × 4¼ inches (roughly 10.5 × 6.5 cm).

It is a handsome piece of Depression-era design. The front panel carries a strong, symmetrical geometric Art Deco pattern on a two-tone metal faceplate, and you can spot the camera by it from across the room. The body is a leatherette-covered metal box with a simple meniscus lens and a rotary shutter offering instantaneous and bulb settings. The original price was $2.75.

The record on this model is thin. No detailed manufacturing history, production numbers, or period reviews have surfaced. The surviving sources are mostly dealer and auction listings, and they describe it only in passing. One auction listing gives dimensions of roughly 3½ × 5 × 5½ inches, and the camera is frequently described in period terms as an Art Deco box-type rollfilm camera. A Craigslist listing from the South Jersey area called it a "Box Rollfilm camera type" with a "distinctive Art Deco front panel design," and noted the 616 film size and 2½ × 4¼-inch pictures.

Most surviving examples today are sold as decorative props or collectibles rather than working cameras. One prop dealer states outright that its vintage cameras are for decorative use and not assumed to function. Individual listings often note cosmetic wear, dust inside the lens, or missing straps, which is the usual fate of an eighty-year-old box camera. 616 film has been discontinued for decades. Anyone wanting to shoot one today would need to respool 120 film onto 616 spools, which some collectors do.