Brownie Target Six-20

The Brownie Target Six-20 was the last of the classic box Brownies. It debuted in 1946 and was discontinued in 1952. The list price was $3.50 in 1946, which was equivalent in purchasing power to about $50 in today's depreciated dollars.

This Brownie has a simple meniscus lens with two aperture stops, the "lens" in front of the shutter being only a flat piece of glass that helped keep dirt out of the camera. The shutter is a rotary shutter with an instant and time setting. The shutter opens when the shutter lever is moved down and is cocked when the shutter lever moves back up. This is different from the old Brownie shutter, which has a flip-flop action that opened the shutter every time the lever was moved. The single action of the Target versions of the Brownie reduced the chance of making an accidental double exposure, although there still is no automatic double exposure prevention. The two brilliant viewfinders let you take pictures in either portrait or landscape orientation. You space the pictures on the film by looking through the little red window at numbers printed on the backing paper. The camera has a slide you can pull out for time exposures, but no tripod socket. You have to put the camera on a stable chair or table to make a time exposure. The normal exposure is about 1/25 to 1/50 of a second. The shutter is not synchronized for flash. If you want to take a flash picture you need to use the open flash method. You put the camera on time, open the shutter, set off the flash, and then close the shutter. If you wanted a flash synchronized Brownie you bought the more expensive Flash Brownie. As the name of the camera implied, it took 620 film. It made eight 2-1/4" x 3-1/4" pictures on a roll of film. The next model Brownie was the molded plastic Brownie Hawkeye, which was a very popular camera.

This one says "Brownie Target Six-20" (the post-WWII name) on the faceplate, but "Target Brownie Six-20" (the pre-WWII name) on the cone.