Polaroid. Refreshing.

[Alpha]

After spending quite a while making big productions of my shoots, with fancy lighting setups, high resolution neg scans, and countless hours post-processing, I've picked up a polaroid one-step. It takes 600 film. Not cheap. About two dollars a shot.

God, it's so refreshing. No grey cards or color targets. No flash meter. No auto focus. No focus at all, in fact. Not even an aperture ring. There's a slider to make it a little darker or a little lighter. And there's a closeup filter built in. It kind of works. It's amazing. It's not amazing because I instantly get to see the photo, but because I just press the button and it's done. It's all over in something like 1/125th.

Collaging them is really cool. And very fun. I get to spend a lot more time actually looking at my own pictures than scanning for errors or thinking about how best to print them. The best part is that they aren't half-bad. True, some of them have a funky blue tinge to the highlights, but for the most part they're reasonably sharp and the colors are true to life, if a bit drab on occasion.

For anyone who's been doing all of the high tech stuff for a while, or has felt overwhelmed at times in their quest to nail those perfect shots with all the latest and greatest equipment, I highly recommend Polaroid. Do yourself a favor. Buy a cheapo camera and a box of 600 for $20.

 

[bhop]

Too bad Polaroid stopped making film..

 

[Garbz]

Yeah but there are projects underway to replicate the chemical process to make this film. Like the Amiga, the diehards are keeping it alive.

 

[Alpha]

There's plenty of 600 around. Even in drugstores. True, it's not being manufactured anymore, but everyone talks about it like all of vanished from the face of the earth overnight. That couldn't be less true.

 

[RyanLilly]

That sounds pretty fun actually. I get the same feeling using my old Weston light meter and Yachica TLR. Or even some old m42 lenses that I recently acquired, something about that old mechanical feel, aperture rings especially, is just more satisfying than buttons and switches sometimes. Its really quite relaxing.