A Facebook friend posted the above picture along with the comment: ‘That “serious” feeling when you put down your smartphone and pick up a real camera…’ Although he’s a camera aficianado he didn’t mention what camera it was. After searching around on the internet for a while I found a number of instances where this picture appeared and in them it was referred to as a “Kodak K-24 US Air Force Camera with Aero-Ektar f2.5, 178 mm, 5×5 lens”. I posted this information to a vintage camera Facebook group to which I belong and was soon informed that this was not the case. One member joked “I am fairly sure that is either not a K24 or the man is about 3 feet tall.” Apparently the K24 is a much smaller camera than this one. The post elicited quite a few comments, many of them quite funny, but eventually one of the members solved the puzzle.

The camera is a Fairchild K-17.

Obviously I didn’t take the picture, nor do I know who did.

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