As a child I often had access to our family camera, which was a 127 point and shoot.
It was a great way to learn photography - loading the roll film, estimating distance and guess exposure, sending off the negatives for developing and getting back the prints - none of which seemed at the time to be high quality, but were great for record shots.

Quite a few years ago, I discovered that that there were a range of 127 format cameras made by Leica, Certo and Ihagee in Europe and in Japan by Yashica, Minolta, and others which were not cheap and ordinary, but were capable of superb results. Many of them were called "baby" cameras, particuarly of the 4x4 cm variety from the late 1950s to early 1960s.In the 1930s, the so called "vest pocket" cameras became popular. In 127 format these were either 3x4 cm (approximately the same area as 35mm film) and 4x6.5cm film area (similar in area to the modern 6x4.5 cm from 120 format, but in comparison very small cameras). Many had excellent uncoated 4 element lens such as Xenars, Tessars and Solinars providing great resolution on modern film stocks. Some of my collection is shown here.

The only problem was obtaining film. Fortunately when I started to use these cameras, Efke in Croatia was making B&W 127 roll film. I believe that they have now stopped maufacture, but Rollei in Germany still has film available. Although I was quite happy with the Efke film, I wanted to try modern emulsions like Delta 100 and C-41 and E6.

So, I built a cut down device, to slice off the edge of 120 film to make 127 format. The device is really simple - a cutting blade inserted into a balsa wood block, placed inside an old 6x9cm, 120 film folder. The bottom last 2 photos are of this device. The blade looks dangerous, but in many cutdowns (done in a changing bag) I have never cut myself!

I have also been fortunate to purchase some 100 foot rolls of Portra 160 film, which simply needs to be cut to length and rolled onto spools with backing paper.