My new gadget: a SX-70 Polaroid camera
A couple of weeks ago i attended a quite interesting and surprising Impossible workshop - see my review here. I was particularly surprised by the manual work and possibilities Polaroid cameras offer.
So it was only logical that i reactivated my ebay-account and found a nice used SX-70 camera. It was quite risky, since there are a lot of reasons why such a camera is not working anymore:
- one of the three mirrors is broken
- the lens is scratched
- the drum that transports the picture out of the camera is not working/malfunctioning
- there is remaining chemicals from older films (e.g. original polaroid films) that are expired and leaked inside the camera)
So I think I was quite lucky to get a fully working one :)
There is actually three versions of the SX-70. I am not sure, which version i got, since my one does not have the cable on the side that identifies the version 1 but also does not have the tripod hole (yes, there are models that have one!) and no strap-hold (see details about the versions in this youtube video here).
The impressive specs of my new camera:
- a folding body design
- a 4-element 116mm f/8 glass lens
- an automatic exposure system
- possibility to adjust exposure
- manual focus (!)
- a shutter speed range from 1/175s to more than 10 seconds
- it even has a flash bar socket - how cool is that!?
According to wikipedia photographers like Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Helmut Newton and Walker Evans used the SX-70...
But after my first foto, I was quite surprised about my picture - this is how it looked 20 secs after i took it:
why did my polaroid came out blue?
It came out of the camera totally blue! Fact is that this blue-ish is totally fine, just give the pic 30 mins to develop further. But nevertheless you still should protect the film directly after the it came out of the camera from light since it still develops. Otherwise you over-expose the image.
Now here are some pictures of my fist Impossible colour film - keep in mind, that you cannot expect the same precision that you get out of a Nikon D800 ;)
Some of my first pictures...