Monthly Archives: February 2012

Spectra Donuts

Spectra
Polaroid Spectra, Polaroid Image Softtone film (expired Oct 2009)

I purchased a Polaroid Spectra camera off eBay recently, they run pretty cheap these days.  This is a big case of tail-wag-dog as I ordered some of the last batch of genuine Polaroid Spectra film from The Impossible Project first.

It was a blast shooting the Spectra, especially since it has the most manual controls (notably flash and AF disable switches) of any Polaroid.

I love the wide image format (compared to the square SX-70 and 600).  And what’s not to like about a camera favored by Shaun The Sheep?

However the expired film didn’t perform well, showing a heavy shift towards red/brown and poor contrast on every image. The battery didn’t even last all ten shots with the shutter failing on shots 8 & 9 and the camera failing even to eject the 10th print.

Nonetheless shooting with the Spectra was a fun experience and I am tempted to get some of Impossible’s Silver Shade B&W film for it next.

And by the way, don’t pass up Stan’s Donut Shop in Santa Clara, CA.  They have the best classic glazed and maple bar donuts we have found yet!

First View-Master Reel

Reel
Photos taken on View-Master Personal Camera, Fujifilm Velvia 50

Our vintage View-Master film cutter and personal mounts arrived early last week and I have made our first personal View-master reel.

The process was actually easy and I am very impressed with the precision engineering of the cutter and mounts.

All you have to do is load your uncut strip of 35mm film into the cutter by aligning the first pair of frames with the cutting holes. Then use the knob to move the film from shot to shot, it clicks nicely into place for each image.

Push down on the cutter and it stamps out the stereo pair of images you are currently looking at.  Take the resulting finger nail-sized film clips, slip them into the tweezers-like inserter, then slide them into open slots in the blank reel.

The only challenge is making sure you have the right side of the reel facing towards you (the one without blank labeling lines for each image) as you insert the film.  You also have to insert the film backwards as if you were looking through it from the opposite direction.

I goofed this up a couple times before I paid good attention to the circle and square guide marks put on both the film and reel.  I will post about this process in more details soon.

Putting my first reel together only took about ten minutes, and I bet with just a little practice it will easily get under five.

There is something magical about seeing yourself and your family in 3D via a View-Master viewer!

Polaroid One Step Flash

  GoldBorder
Polaroid One Step Flash, The Impossible Project PX 600 UV+ Silver Shade Gold Edition

We made an impromptu visit to our family in Southern California this past weekend.  We realized that a planned vacation next week wasn’t happening, so we decided last minute to pull off a quick weekend road trip.

My mother-in-law had recently given me a Polaroid One Step Flash camera so I figured it was a good opportunity to try it out. I bought two packs of The Impossible Project’s latest films, the PX600 UV+ Silver Shade (black & white) and PX680 Color Shade.

The camera worked perfectly fine. Or perhaps I should say it worked as designed since the One Step Flash is a rather run-of-the-mill Polaroid. The always-fires flash was somewhat annoying and resulted in at least one completely blown-out exposure outside.

The Impossible film is coming along but nowhere near the quality of the original Polaroid emulsions in their heyday.

I liked the Silver Shade black & white film a lot as it was fairly contrasty and the 8-pack only resulted in one image with a tiny undeveloped patch. Their Color Shade on the other hand seemed quite washed out, and about half of the pictures had fairly large undeveloped patches.

For instant color photography I think I will stick with my trusty Polaroid Automatic 100 Land Camera and Fujifilm’s excellent FP-100C film.

Perhaps the best thing to come from the Impossible film was a golden dark slide that came on top of one of the packs. This is a Willy Wonka-esque gift certificate to The Impossible Project’s store.

Based on a whim I used it to order some original Polaroid Spectra film which Impossible recently put up for sale.

Do I have a Spectra camera?… Not yet, but I’m working on that!

Seeing Double

SeeingDouble
(this shot of the film taken with) Nikon D300, Nikkor AF 105/2.8 D Micro

As my Dear Sweet Wife has mentioned, we have been bitten by the View-Master bug in our household.

In this day and age when our kids have done just about everything possible on our iPhones, it has been a pleasure to see them wildly entertained by our childhood favorite analog stereo image viewing device.

Our six- and three-year olds, their cousins, and a number of their friends have been amazed for hours by viewing wheels about Dora, Cars, space exploration, and other topics.

While we are happy to see the View-Master brand still alive and well after over 65 years, we are getting serious about making our own reels via a decidedly vintage approach!

We purchased a classic View-Master Personal Stereo Camera and have run our first roll of slide film through it.  I shot a number of exposure tests and everything seems to have come out well.

With this success under our wings we have ordered the accompanying vintage cutter device which slices out the pairs for perfect insertion into blank reels.  With luck we may make our first reels in a week or two.