Kodak had a long history of introducing what seems to be ever-smaller film formats. We’ve had 127 roll film (1912), 35mm cartridge film (1934), 828 roll film (1935), 126 or Instamatic cartridge film (1963), 110 cartridge film (1972), Kodak Disc film (1982) and the Advanced Photo System or APS cartridge film (1996).
All were aimed at simplifying film loading, making cameras easier to use and, thus, increasing the number of “Kodak Moments” that people took – and, in turn, increasing Kodak’s film and processing profits. But industry observers like to point out that there are three more reasons for doing this.
First, the smaller the negative the more “rolls” of film can be cut from the same master roll, making them more profitable. Second, something “new” on the market always boosts sales. Finally, selling the new, specialized processing equipment to photo-finishers was also profitable.
Introduced in 1982, Kodak Disc films used a plastic cartridge just 66 x 54 by 4mm thick. The film itself was contained in an internal disk roughly 65mm / 2.5 inches in diameter, with the 15 individual negatives arranged like pieces of a pie. Sort of like a View-Master reel.
One of Kodak's design goals was to make the cartridge thin enough that a Disc camera could be genuinely pocket-sized – and there it succeeded! Disc cameras were often just 25-30mm thick.
But these ever-smaller negative sizes came with some built-in problems. The major one was that the smaller the negative, the more it has to be magnified to make a given-sized print. Thus, the film grain showed in the final image.
If the films were to be very fine grain, they were “slower” and needed longer exposures – which resulted in more blurry images. Film that is not held flat (not easy, in an inexpensive plastic cartridge) also creates blurry images. And this blur was magnified when making enlargements.
The Kodak Disc cameras reached the pinnacle of these problems. The negative size was the smallest consumer format that Kodak ever made. Smaller than the 110 films and even slightly smaller than that of the tiny Minox “spy” cameras.
Put another way, the Disc negative was just 10% the area of a 35mm one. So the negative had to be enlarged 14 times to make a 4x6in standard print and 25x to make an 8x10in enlargement. By comparison, a 35mm negative is enlarged just over 4x for a 4x6in print and 8.5x for the 8x10. This increased magnification also made any flaws more visible.
In other words, the tiny Minox negative required virtually the same enlargement as a Disc negative. Yet Minox photographs normally looked much better, because Minox cameras had excellent film flatness due to their top-quality manufacturing and superior lenses. Of course, they were also significantly more expensive.
Kodak attempted to overcome the Disc film’s flatness problem by using film with a stable polyester base and a hybrid pressure plate system that pressed the film flat only for the moment of exposure, reducing its tendency to curl.
It was a clever mechanical workaround, but ultimately limited by the accuracy of the plastic moulding process and the small negative size.
These much higher magnifications, coupled with the lower quality plastic lenses found in many Disc cameras, meant that users did not get the results they were expecting. (To be fair, the better models did have glass lenses, but not of the quality found in the Minox and other top-line sub-miniatures.)
In the late 1980s Kodak slowly reduced its Disc camera lineup as demand shrank, quietly discontinuing them as stocks sold out. Mass production had ended in 1988 and stocks were gone by the end of 1990. It was a classic case of convenience winning initial sales but image quality limiting long-term success. After just eight years, they were gone.
The last Disc films were made in 1998 or 1999, leaving the cameras as collectors' curiosities.
Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras, as well as his book A Brief History of Photography.
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