Kodak Instamatic

A Kodak Instamatic 50 beside the 126 film cartridge that made the whole idea work. Kodak launched the Instamatic series in 1963, and the cartridge removed the one step that defeated beginners: threading film. You opened the back, dropped the cartridge in, closed it and started shooting. There was no wrong way to load it. That small change, plus low prices, made the Instamatic range one of the best-selling camera families ever, at around 70 million units. Kodak's 126 film is long discontinued, so this is now a camera for the shelf, or for patient people who reload old cartridges by hand.