Polaroid Film Recorder

[ektachrome]

Hello
I have just bought a used Polaroid Film Recorder from Eb** to transfer my existing digipics (from family) to film.
It was recording this morning when black smoke started coming out.
I turned it off and opened it up, to find the smoke was just burning dust on a heatsink, so I just blew it away with compressed air.
Should it be OK to use, since it cannot be returned and it cost over £30.
Thanks
Ektachrome

P.S. Sorry if this breaks any rules

 

[AgX]

At least it made me aware that Polaroid once offered such thing...

And it is great to learn about someone not only using film but even bringing photographs done digitally to film. It is the first time I read about someone doing this here at Apug.

 

[jp498]

I used to use a film recorder back in the mid-90's. We'd use it to make presentations like we'd use powerpoint for today. Scan in a photo, add words and information in coreldraw. Print back to film. If time was of the essence, we'd record onto polaroid 35mm transparency film and develop in 10 minutes right in the office.

 

[ektachrome]

Today, a computer guy came and looked at it. He has now fixed it. A resistor was overheating, which caused the dust to burn.
I'm glad it works
Ektachrome

 

[wildbill]

I own one as well that does up to 4x5. I've had it several years and still haven't used it.

 

[MartinP]

These things used to account for a lot of the 35mm E6 when I worked in a lab, but that was more than twenty years ago of course. Local graphics-agencies would send taxis round with bags of film most days and then supply the results to their business customers. Prior to that there were various painful options involving lith film and gel filters.

I'm curious about software and drivers (for Win 3,1 ?), as well as the motor-drive camera-body which fitted on the unit - is it rather worn out, or still trust-able ?

 

[Nelson]

How's the quality and resolution of your Polaroid unit? I have an old film recorder (forget the name) that is good for making presentation/PowerPoint slides, but doesn't have the resolution needed for pictorial use. I'd love to archive digital images on film, but my film recorder wouldn't work well because the quality and resolution just isn't that great.

 

[AgX]

The highest grade Polaroid Recorder had a resolution of 8192 pixels (=4097LP) for the longest side of image
Now you can calculate the resolution per length-unit for your given film format.

 

[Prof_Pixel]

I'd love to archive digital images on film

You might want to check out Digineg at http://www.digineg.com/

I did some consulting with it's owner, Steve Hagel, several years ago.

 

[okto]

They also made a "printer" that writes to Spectra film in a tray, basically an external CD writer (remember those?) form factor. I bought one on eBay a few years ago for like, five bucks. Haven't used it yet, but with Impossible starting to make some film that isn't just experimental Lomo-type quality, I might see if it works.