Want more "control" with Polaroid cameras!

jasonjoo · Jun 25, 2007

I am having a BLAST with my newly acquired Polaroid Model 440 land camera. However, I am now wanting "more." More control. Are there any polaroid cameras that offer more control in terms of setting a shutter speed, aperture, etc?

Thanks in advance,

Jason

DBP · Jun 25, 2007

Yes, but they are expensive. Specifically, there are the 180, 185, 190, and 195. See Dead Link Removed.

sfadam · Jun 25, 2007

as an aside, you can use any 35mm camera of your choice and shoot slides, and then print them using any one of the polaroid slide printers (daylab, vivitar slide printer, polaprinter,etc.) i make prints all the time, even not for the sake of image manipulations

jasonjoo · Jun 26, 2007

Yikes, they are expensive! I'll have to stick with my model 440

sfadam, thanks for the suggestion. I had no idea that you could do that!

Akki14 · Jun 26, 2007

Daylabs are quite pricey too. I loved the polaroid transfers a university student showed us back in high school but they had a daylab and i never worked out the specifics of it until now and now that I have a type-100 film camera, I hope to get around to trying it out sometime soon.

You could have fun tricking the sensor with various neutral density filters either over the sensor only or over the sensor and the lens. I was trying that with my husband's Instax camera and with my sx-70 when I have 600type film in it.

Roger Hicks · Jun 26, 2007

Dear Jason,

Also 600SE, NPC 195 -- both serious money again. Or put a Polaroid back on any number of other cameras: I adapted one for my Graflex quarter-plate.

Cheers,

Roger

jasonjoo · Jun 26, 2007

Thanks for the suggestions!

Roger, I thought about using a MF body and a polaroid adaptor, but I'd really like to make use of the entire image area of a polaroid. Almost all the samples I've seen only use a portion of the polaroid negative.

LF is just too big for my tastes (for now ).

sfadam · Jun 26, 2007

yeah, daylabs can be expensive. but they give you a lot of control over the print.
polaprinters usually go for $30-50 and vivitar slide printers from $40-70. which is a little odd, because the polaprinter has adjustments for contrast and exposure, while the vivitar printer only has exposure control. both have slide holders that allow you to insert filters for color balancing.

Roger Hicks · Jun 27, 2007

jasonjoo said:
Thanks for the suggestions!

Roger, I thought about using a MF body and a polaroid adaptor, but I'd really like to make use of the entire image area of a polaroid. Almost all the samples I've seen only use a portion of the polaroid negative.

LF is just too big for my tastes (for now ).

That's the good bit about a quarter-plate camera -- Polaroid IS quarter-plate. Or you could look for an old 9x12cm camera designed for single metal dark-slides, either baseboard or doppel-klapp. These are usually much smaller than 4x5 inch.

It's also possible to to make a body to go on the front of an adapter and stick a front-cell-focusing lens on there. All you need is a simple pyramid. I actually made one out of cardboard, but thin sheet alloy or plywood would be better. Then stick a front-cell-focusing lens (in a shutter) from an old RF folder on it: surprisingly many 105s will cover quarter-plate Polaroid. All you need then is a wire-frame viewfinder.

Cheers,

Roger

Steve Smith · Jun 27, 2007

Or you could get a cheap pack film camera, remove the front and add a lens from something else. Like this:

Steve.

jasonjoo · Jun 27, 2007

Wow, I must say, a lot of this went over my head! I'm not very tech saavy

Steve, that is pretty cool! I'm guessing you can only set the aperture through the lens, but the camera will still dictate the shutter speeds based on that aperture?

Roger Hicks · Jun 27, 2007

jasonjoo said:
Wow, I must say, a lot of this went over my head! I'm not very tech saavy

Steve, that is pretty cool! I'm guessing you can only set the aperture through the lens, but the camera will still dictate the shutter speeds based on that aperture?

Nope. You set both aperture and speed on the lens.

Steve's idea is MUCH better than mine.

Cheers,

Roger

lens_hacker · Jul 27, 2007

Several years ago, a company converted automatic Polaroids to manual control by replacing the electric eye with a variable resistor. They "calibrated" it to shutter speed. Basically, the CDS cell is just a variable resistor. So the idea was to put a manual one in its place.

Anybody want to try it?

kaygee · Jul 28, 2007

That sounds very, very interesting lens_hacker, and I do have a spare polaroid camera that is just waiting for an experiment...

Phil · Jul 28, 2007

Here's another Polaroid modification I saw on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110151131907

Great idea for a portrait camera - the Big Shot has a built-in fixed distance rangefinder. I expect the spreader-to-roller mod help the print quality.

When my magicubes are gone, I'll attempt a similar mod on mine.

Phil

3Dfan · Jul 29, 2007

sfadam said:
as an aside, you can use any 35mm camera of your choice and shoot slides, and then print them using any one of the polaroid slide printers (daylab, vivitar slide printer, polaprinter,etc.) i make prints all the time, even not for the sake of image manipulations

How are the lenses on them? Will they make good sharp prints?

Want more "control" with Polaroid cameras!

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