Isolation walk with Polaroid

[lynnb]

Godfrey, looking forward to seeing your new camera.
Jim, very nice pictures as always. Out of curiosity, do you apply any unsharp masking to your scans? I've found I can draw out a lot more detail from the Instax scans with some USM without introducing artefacts.

Edit: I use radius 1.0 and amount 100% USM

 

[Godfrey]

As always, looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

I've been tempted by Polaroid, especially the monochrome, but the cost per exposure and the instability of the developed image have put me off. But you're right, a plain SX-70 would be a much more affordable way to try it just for the experience; a latest-and-greatest rebuilt SLR 670 is nice but hardly a requirement.

The original couple of generations of the IP film was fairly impermanent, 'tis true, but I've not seen much fade or shifting with prints made since about 2014. Film price has also dropped a bit ... it's now $18.99/pack of 8, or about $2.30 a frame; a nickel cheaper if you buy three-packs. I don't consider that overly expensive for the volume of it I shoot. It is about double the cost of Instax SQ or Wide per frame, albeit the Polaroid frames are a bit bigger. They seem about as stable as the Polaroid prints are now.

I don't like to get hung up on the cost of photography, but consider the cost of shooting 120 format 6x6 negative. The film costs about $0.50 per frame, on average, and if you don't process yourself, then develop and high quality scans cost another $20/roll at most of the places I find ... so that comes to a little over $2 per frame as well. I know most folks on this forum will process their own and even scan their own, but that's not the case for "most photographers" of which this forum is a significant subset.

None of it is "necessary" given the availability and quality of even current smartphone digital cameras, so I just view all of it as a luxury expense that I take on because I like to do it and can afford to. 😀

G

 

[Rob-F]

In this time of plague lockdown, I mostly get out for exercise on bicycle or on foot. Yesterday, I carried the Polaroid SLR670a with color film in it and made three exposures in my hour and a half walk.

Sign – Santa Clara 2020


House, Tree, Fence, Shrub – Santa Clara 2020


Tree & Fence – Santa Clara 2020

All with: Polaroid SLR670a + Polaroid Originals 600 Color​

Shooting with a Polaroid is so different from using almost any other kind of camera! 😀

enjoy! G

Great use of the Polaroid medium. I did enjoy it, thanks!

 

[Godfrey]

I took my 'isolation exercise' ride early today because a few friends were going to meet up for an early lunch and chat at a Weinerschnitzel in San Jose. I pulled out the MiNT InstaKon RF-70 because I hadn't used it in a bit, loaded it with some fresh film after checking the batteries (still had plenty of charge!), and set off on my bicycle.

Aside from making a half a dozen dumb mistakes* (... because I haven't used the camera for a bit, sigh, and it's so different to use compared to the SX-70 ...), I am pleased with the photos. The Fuji Instax Wide film produces very nice quality, as expected.

* The mistakes came down to a simple thing: The RF-70 is manual aperture control and has a minimum exposure time of 1/500 sec; the Instax film is ISO 800. I kept over-exposing, because I was set to f/8 ... ISO 800 @ f/8 really needs something like 1/1600 second for this kind of sunlit scene. The SX-70 film is ISO 160, the 600 film is ISO 640, and the SX-70 or SLR670 variants can get to shorter exposure times and adjust the aperture smaller automatically (when on auto mode); my other (digital) cameras all have 1/2000-1/8000 second capability so I rarely run into over-exposure this way and just forgot.

Dumb on my part. Once I realized the problem, I just stopped down to f/16 and the RF70 did great. Such it is... 😀

G

 

[Mackinaw]

Very nice. Instax is indeed fine film.

Jim B.

 

[lynnb]

I really like the second (guy in white mask) and fourth (woman sitting at table) photos Godfrey!

 

[robert blu]

Nice series, for me the two "masked guys" photos are really good, they tell the story in this specific moment and the personality of these gentlemen.
First and last picture are goos as well, so I have to rethink what I wrote: all the four pictures are really good, each one for its own reason. Like the masked man in the background fo the first photo.
Wow, you did a great work !

 

[Godfrey]

Thanks for all the comments! I really should take the RF70 out more often, it's a sweet camera. 🙂

I really need to build a jig to properly hold all my instant film formats and make copy camera capture more consistent and reliable. These I scanned quickly with my Epson multifunction printer/scanner and it did a decent if not outstanding job ... the full resolution images show some newton rings and it only produces 8-bit TIFF or JPEG files for editing. But they're good enough for most purposes.

I've got to charge up my 6/66 Instant Pinhole camera for an outing ... 😀

G

 

[Mackinaw]

Took a walk through a nearby small town yesterday. I took along my SX-70 loaded with some new Polaroid B&W film. I'm really impressed with their new film. Excellent tonal range.

Jim B.

 

[Godfrey]

Very nice, Jim!

Yes indeed: The current generation of the Polaroid films is really 'living up to the legend' finally, particularly the B&W emulsions. The automatic exposure in the cameras is remarkably good too, once you get a handle on how to work with the lighten/darken control to deal with scene conditions, you can get a good exposure every time now.

I'm down to my 'buy now' limit... I have three packs of SX-70 and three packs of 600 film left in stock. Time to re-stock. They deliver pretty quickly, so I'll likely just buy two three-packs of each. I buy in a larger quantity at one time if I'm working on a particular project and know I'll be needing it, but I don't like having it sit too long and my refrigerator is over-stuffed since I'm also trying to limit grocery expeditions for the foreseeable future.

G

 

[Mackinaw]

Godfrey, I agree. I still have reservations about Polaroid color film, but not B&W. This stuff is excellent. Actually I'm shooting 600 series film using the ND filter sheet Polaroid sells. I need to turn the exposure dial to the dark side, probably about a 1/2 stop, to get the exposures you see.

And I was pleasantly surprised to find that a local store sells fresh Polaroid film. I went there to buy some Instax film for my Instax Square camera, and right next to the Instax film was Polaroid. I'm glad that Polaroid is making the effort to market their film.

Jim B.

 

[robert blu]

Excellent B&W tones Jim! You are correct the new B&W film has a good tonal range. And it is nice to see local shops, in my town as well selling Polaroid films.

 

[Bingley]

Thanks!

I used to always scan with the full paper border of the print too, but lately I'm moving away from that as it seems difficult to get what I want out of the print that way.

Still playing with ideas... 🙂

G

I posted about the Google Photoscan app over on the instax thread that lynnb started last week. Worth playing with, especially since it's free...

 

[Bingley]

Loving the photos, Godfrey, thanks for starting this thread!

 

[Godfrey]

I posted about the Google Photoscan app over on the instax thread that lynnb started last week. Worth playing with, especially since it's free...

Loving the photos, Godfrey, thanks for starting this thread!

Thank you!

Re: Photo Scan ... I've had Photo Scan and worked with it a bit for some time. It works pretty well for a quick shot type application, but because it's a multiple pass/multiple shot with post-integration, it's hard to be consistent with it and, ultimately, it becomes very time consuming when you want to scan any number of photos. After working with it a while, it fell into my bin of 'interesting approaches but not for me' apps I've tried.

For me, the tried and true camera copy scan returns the best results with the best consistency, and the least amount of mucking around with the image afterwards. The only issue with it is the initial setup time—That takes a lot of careful attention to detail every time to get the best results. But once you're set up, it's very fast, very consistent, and it puts out the quality I'm after.

G

 

[Godfrey]

My restock order of Polaroid 600 and SX-70 film arrived yesterday. I've been most pleased with the B&W emulsion in either speed in the last batch I purchased, so most of what I bought were B&W packs, but I did buy two packs of the latest 600 Color so I could evaluate whether it had been improved yet again and what the current status was.

So just before my day's cycle ride, I loaded up the SLR670a with a pack of fresh and dandy Polaroid 600 Color film. My head was not in a very photographic way as I rode, but when I got to my usual spot to sit and eat my lunch in Japan town, I looked at the stop sign and memorial behind it, pulled out the camera, and made a snap of it. Reds have been particularly weak on the 600 film...

After talking on the phone for ten minutes, I pulled the print back out of my bag and ... WOW! That's the best color I've seen out of the re-born Polaroid integral film yet! I snapped a photo of it with the iPhone on the spot, with the original subject in the background:

There's still a little tinge of magenta in it, but the reds are so much better, the contrast and color has a liveliness that has been missing in previous generations.

I'm pretty excited by this. Time to order a few more packs of color film! 😀

G

 

[raid]

Graffiti Bridge, Pensacola, Florida.

 

[Mackinaw]

.......There's still a little tinge of magenta in it, but the reds are so much better, the contrast and color has a liveliness that has been missing in previous generations.

I'm pretty excited by this. Time to order a few more packs of color film! 😀

G

Pretty impressive. I'm still have a pack of B&W in my SX-70. Maybe I'll try color next. Glad to see that Polaroid is making steady progress in making their instant films better.

Jim B.