The Quest for the Perfect Camera: Kodak Advantix T550 – aka last ditch effort to pretend digital wasn’t a thing

Posted: 5/10/2023

Summary

I wanted something small and pocketable, and digital wasn’t quite a thing just yet (was just around the corner though) so I grabbed a little APS film camera on sale. it’s the perfect size and weight, with a fixed 28mm lens, and does panoramas :) It’s a great little camera, and took some lovely photos with it.

Year of release

1999 – Office Space! (make sure you have filled out a TPS cover sheet), the Columbine High School massacre :(, Y2K, Napster, Brendan Fraser in Blast from the Past (oh, and The Mummy & Dudley Do Right). The world was horrified by Jar Jar, perplexed by The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, and The Matrix! Bicentennial Man was also released, … and I’d moved to the Windows PC world from MS-DOS, the C=Amiga, C=128 and the VIC-20 carefully stored in a cupboard. The EOS 630 was a bit of a pain to travel with due to the size hence the T550

A bit lighter than the last two!

Specs:

Film or Pixels	Advanced Photo System (APS) film – IX240 – 24mm C (Classic) 25.1 x 16.7 mm, 3:2 H (HDTV) 30.2 x 16.7 mm, 16:9 P (Panoramic) 30.2 x 9.5 mm, 3:1
Type	Fixed lens compact
Auto or Manual	Auto – pretty much everything
Lens / Aperture	28mm f/3.5
Image Stabilisation	No
Shutter Speed	1/4 -1/500 sec, Auto
Self Timer	Yes :) 10 seconds
Viewfinder	Real image
Film Advance	Auto
Film Retract	Automatic rewind, mid-roll rewind possible.
ISO / ASA	ISO 50 to 1600 – DX coded
Flash	Yes, Kodak Sensalite
Power / Battery	1x CR2 Lithium
Weatherproof	Yes – weather resistant
Dimensions	92 x 62 x 34 mm
Weight	121g, 138g with battery and film

APS film is not to be confused with APS Digital even though APS Digital used the C and H references to highlight the digital sensor size...even though no-one would remember the APS film sizes. Anyway, APS-C (Sony, Nikon, Pentax) , APS-H (Canon)

APS film also included a magnetic data strip to store data from the camera: print format, number of prints, title, and exposure information.

APS film was designed to remain in the cartridge, and the cartridge has an indicator for “empty”, “not full”, “full”, and “developed”. Some APS cameras allowed a user to load and unload/reload film so you could swap films mid-roll (yes some 35mm cameras allowed you to rewind and leave the leader out but you had to manually advance the film to the next available shot, and might not get it right, or double expose over an already exposed frame). APS film loaded/unloaded into the canister with no leader, but required additional equipment to process (now they just break it open and remove the film – so you can still get it developed).

Kodak and Fujifilm both stopped making APS film in 2011. I still have a few rolls, but is quite expired now.

Lens

tiny tiny lens, but good pics from it

Viewfinder

It’s soo tiny, but it works :)

Pros

Small and light, good pics

Cons

Can’t get APS film for it anymore, and what is on eBay is expired

again, without a battery you can’t do a thing

Rating

It’s good, and I still love using it – really wish they would make a digital equivalent

Film or Pixels / Storage

APS film – which they stopped making in 2011 :( Came in Colour or Monochrome

Ergonomics

it’s small, but perfect for me

Buttons and Controls:

Top	APS C – H – P selector C – Classic – 3:2 H – HDTV – 16:9 P – Panorama – 3:1 Shutter release (nice and smooth)
Bottom	Waaay off centre tripod socket – ridiculously at the very edge of possibility
Front	Lift up flap for the flash/turn it on
Sides	Camera wrist-strap lug, weird Kodak rubbery thing?
Back	Flash, Timer, Date, Title: 01 Birthday 02 Vacation 03 Wedding 04 Graduation 05 Congratulations 06 Christmas 07 Holiday 08 I Love You 09 Party 10 Family

Ease of use

So easy – point and click

Image Quality

good for such a small size

Image Samples

Here’s one from the 1999’s,

and here’s some I took recently with the film that was still in it when I dug it out of storage (about 20 years in the camera!) (and a LOT of post work to get them presentable!)