Kids Given Old Camera, Hilarity Ensues
When Benny and Rafi Fine, two brothers who are comedians, writers and video producers, showed today’s youth the photography equipment of yesterday, hilarity naturally ensued.
The funny new video “Kids React to Old Cameras” delivers exactly what its title promises — kids reacting to a Canon Sure Shot 85 Zoom Camera from 1998, an old point-and-shoot camera most any Generation X-er or Millennial would know how to wield. The YouTube video is part of a larger web series called “Kids React To,” in which children are presented with technology from decades past. Other episodes of the series have featured kids encountering Walkmans, rotary phones, Nintendo Game Boys, and more.
“This time we showed them a camera that we may not feel is old — a 1998 point-and-shoot film camera — but to these kids, who were not even born then, they immediately call it old, and have no idea what to do,” said Benny Fine. “Except one astute 13-year-old.”
When asked to use the cameras, the children point and shoot as they would with a smartphone or digital camera. The camera doesn’t work of course, because they haven’t opened the shutter. They have no idea there even is a shutter.
Even after the kids try snapping a few pictures, the Fine Brothers remind the kids that they haven’t actually taken any pictures yet, because they’re still missing one key part of a film camera.
An 11-year-old asks, “A battery? A plug? A little card thing?”
A 10-year-old says, “There’s no photo fluid in this thing!”
The answer, of course, is film. When the kids are handed film and told to put it in the camera, this task again proves difficult. As one 11-year-old noted, “Who knew taking a picture could be such hard work?”
However, it was about that time that the real bad news came. When the kids finally got to try snapping a selfie or two and check out how looked, they found out that back then, people not only had to pay to see the pictures, but were also forced to wait for them to get developed.
“I feel bad for those people,” said a 12-year-old. “This is the devil camera.”
Only one out of 10 of the kids in the video preferred the old camera.
“The time is not too distant when even professional photographers will stare at old cameras with the same look of bemused bewilderment as a telegraph machine or VHS machine — technology is moving at such a fast pace that digital cameras are already running laps around their ancestors,” says Fred Tilner, Marketing Director, 42nd Street Photo.
“What’s the whole point of taking it?” asked one 10-year-old.
An 11-year-old then wondered, “When did the real camera come out where you didn’t have to do all that?”
