I remember walking into an old camera store on Batu Road in 1986 with my dad and the gentleman minding the store had a few Polaroid instant cameras sitting on the shelf, including two original SX-70 cameras and one with the sonar autofocus system. The SX-70 had proper SLR viewing capabilities which made it great for doing closeups. Later and earlier cameras were all based on separate viewfinder systems.
As a child I started keeping a scrapbook of the things around me, from leaves in my garden to tickets for concerts. I started putting a new scrapbook together based on photographs as well. Meanwhile, all I knew was that I wanted an instant camera and I ended up buying my first Polaroid in 1989 from a junk store off Foch Ave for $50. It had no battery, no box, no film… just a strap. After meeting with the local Polaroid agent, the camera was modified to take AA batteries and then the whole fascination with Polaroids began.
The Polaroid 104 camera took standard pack film, which to this day remains in production by Fuji. Polaroid as a company has ceased all production of film. The variety of the old films was amazing but Fuji makes 3 varieties which should cater for most uses, FP100c (ISO 100 colour in gloss or matte finish), FP100b (ISO 100 black and white) and FP3000b (ISO 3000 black and white). The lineup is remarkably similar to Polaroids. The main buyers of these films were professionals using them in Polaroid backs on medium and large format cameras for test shots since digital didn't' exists back in those days.
The pack films or peel-apart films were relatively simple things. After the shots were taken, the film is pulled out to reveal a print stuck to a negative. After 60seconds or whatever time it took, the user had to manually separate the print to reveal the image. It would take a few minutes more for the colour to stabilize. The negative contained some rather nasty caustic chemicals that smelt bad and also irritated skin. Typically, the warmer it is, the faster the film develops. While using them professionally with my old Hasselblads, I would usually bring a thermometer to monitor the temperature to ensure the Polaroids were as accurate as possible. Polaroids, unlike Fuji Instant, tended to retain some sort of colour cast on the image and it varied from batch to batch of film. The Fuji generally had more realistic colours.
Around 1990, I bought another Polaroid, a One Step which is based on the SX-70 film format. It was an instant camera which had the image ejected after the photo was shot. The SX-70 film proved difficult to obtain, even 20 years ago and I didn't use it much. It can take Polaroid 600 film with a minor modification to the film pack. It was however compact and small and required little intervention from the user with its fixed focus lens. The battery was in the film pack so I didn't have to go buy batteries. The SX70 did have wonderful colours though; warm and pleasing to the eye. Note that they're not professional cameras and purely for personal enjoyment. I ended up using the Polaroid 104 most of the time since the films were generally easier to buy. For work, I shot thousands of Polaroids, mostly Fuji FP since they were widely available and were more accurate than their original siblings from the US.
I was struck by the need to modernize the Polaroid fleet and ended up with the last of the old Polaroid pack film cameras, the ProPack which still resembles the pack film cameras from the 60s with a bellows. It was modernized though; having a much better lens and it had a timer on the back for timing your films. It also allowed the use of standard AA batteries vs. the rare single cell battery of old. It also featured a tripod socket among other things. It's focused manually by scale (no rangefinder like the old cameras) and uses a newer press style shutter (similar to large format cameras).
I also found two Fuji Instax cameras, a 210 and a 500AF, the latter being a higher end camera that's become incredibly rare. The Instax gives me what an old Spectra would yield though the camera itself wasn't as pretty. The Instax is an automatic instant film system where the film pops out of the camera and requires no intervention from the user when it comes to the development time. It also remains the only fully automatic instant film that is produced today. The Instax 210 is a dual range focus camera (user selects closer focusing or distant focusing ranges) and had an automatic flash that can't be turned off. It does however, use readily available AA batteries. The Instax 500AF is autofocus, has a self timer, has a flash that provides red-eye reduction and a facility to turn the flash off for longer available light exposures. It also has a tripod mounting screw but uses more expensive CR123A lithium batteries (about $18 each and requires two batteries to operate). The 500 has a much better viewfinder and the controls are at the back vs. side on the 210.
Instant film cameras were popular with organizations as well, especially insurance companies and some law enforcement divisions. It was a fast way to file images and they were tamperproof. Since only one image is produced per shot, each image was an original. There were special Polaroid films that also produced a film negative that could be reproduced.
Cameras and such aside, the Polaroid changed the way people saw things and paved the way for instant gratification at a time when digital cameras didn't exist. I've always loved them and its probably the only time when i really shoot things for myself.
Remembering the Polaroid
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