I loved the Fuji FP100c peel apart film in old Polaroid pack film cameras until it was discontinued. This abstract was a long exposure of Christmas lights outside using a Polaroid Land Automatic 100.
Hard to choose, Dimitri! I’ve decided on this spectra sheet which captures the beautiful tones of expired Polaroid complimenting the buildings and sky.
I shot this photograph of the Mackinac Bridge with a Sinar A-1 on early New55 film. They had issues with their developer pods; sometimes they wouldn’t break. In this case, the failure resulted in a developed picture where the line of the emulsion matched the line of the bridge. I couldn’t take this one again if I tried.
Here‘s a of my favourite building to photograph, an old radio station from the 1930’s. It‘s located in the middle of nowhere, and it‘s always a bit surreal to come out of the forest to a clearing and see this concrete cathedral, as it‘s nicknamed. The pink novelty film makes it even more out of this world.
This picture is almost twice analog. It’s an Instax portrait of my sons during our holiday in Denmark. Then I took a picture of the polaroid on some 35mm slide film. And yes, then I cheated, because I scanned it ;-)
I don‘t own any Instax cameras, and a year ago I bought my daughter a Fuji Instax mini. But Polaroid is a different story :) I really like this machine.
I made a short video that demonstrates how to fold and unfold/open a Polaroid SX-70 camera. It also shows how the film “magically” develops in 15 minutes (sped up, obviously).
I’m not an expert on moving picture film but as far as I know, there are three ways of doing this:
1) Shoot and develop a positive. For colour, you can use Ektachrome E100 — which is an excellent film that’s been recently revived and is produced new. I have a review of it here: analog.cafe/r/kodak-ektach…
You will need to develop your Ektachrome in E-6 chemistry. You can also develop some black and white films as a positive (a different process) — but that depends on the lab and whether that film has a clear enough base.
2) Shoot negative, scan, then transfer to positive film. This may be expensive. Essentially, you’ll shoot, develop, scan, edit, and then use a machine that can transfer your digital images onto positive film and then develop that. This method also gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to image quality, effects, etc. Some modern Hollywood films are made this way.
3) Shoot negative and then directly transfer to positive. Essentially, it’ll be your developed negatives that will be projected on suitable emulsion using a machine. I know the least about this method other than it’s common in the industry.
Oh, but! I want to say something about this camera too. It’s about the plastic Polaroid I-2 lens.
Modern plastic lenses can be incredibly sharp. The flagship $1,000+ smartphones use them. Polaroid’s new I-2 lens is sold as the sharpest Polaroid lens ever made — sharper than the one in my SX-70 camera (which has been considered to be the sharpest lens up until now on this type of a camera since the 1970s when it was released: analog.cafe/r/polaroid-sx-…)
One video even showed a comparison between the two cameras (youtube.com/watch?v=kBJzE6…) Of course, those were not scientific measurements and Polaroid hasn’t shared any of their technical data.
I am sure that the new lens is sharper, but that is not what makes a camera lens good (unless you’re just starting with photography and that’s all you know, which is unsarcastically great!) But the character of bokeh, vignetting, contrast, and other distortions are a huge part of the experience — and no review put out thus far has mentioned any of these. And of course, I’m curious about durability.
I’ll keep an eye out for more feedback and deeper dives into this camera. Polaroid didn’t send me mine so that’s all I have for now, unless the blog does really well this fall/winter and I end up purchasing one to test and maybe keep for a very long time.
This is obviously a huge milestone for Polaroid, formerly Impossible Project. 🎉
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