Sunday, September 04, 2005

Playing with Polaroid PolaBlue Film


Polablue dragonfly
Originally uploaded by argusmaniac.
PolaBlue is a weird film. It was (is?) made to produce reverse text slides with a blue background. Therefore, it's a hi-res and hi-contrast film. Also slower than molasses with an ISO of between 8 and 10. I was given a couple of packs of it -- each package has one roll of film and a processsing cartridge. You expose the film and put it and the developer cartridge into the Polaroid Autoprocessor unit..turn the cranks, and voila! in 5 minutes you have developed film that can be used for slides. A great idea for quick slides in the pre-digital photography world -- I recall using this film in the early 1980s for a presentation.


Now however, PolaBlue is an anachronism. I don't know if it is still being sold. The film had an expiration date of 1992, so I figured that I would try a roll out as a slow pictorial film and go for the weird effects. Before I tried it out on something that took planning, I tried a roll out in my yard. To be honest, I am amazed that it was still working. So what you see here is a shot of a dragonfly lawn ornament. The really cool effect was after I scanned the slide and inverted it in Photoshop. That gave me this image.


So, I will save the next roll for when I will be shooting something with lots of hi-contrast forms. That should be interesting, and I'll know what I got within 5 minutes...

at

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:16 PM, December 02, 2006

    hey. i'm a foreigner who stumbled across your blog because i was looking for some information about pola-blue instant film.

    i'm planing to buy some, also the processor... but i was not sure if chemicals still work after being expired for 10years !

    have you had any problems with it, because it was expired ? maybe the process of developement should be longer than 5min to be sure.. i dunno

    is the actual transparent material a negative or a positive ?

    thanks for your time and i'm glad i found you ! ;)

    cheers
    severin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tote en Dallas10:28 PM, February 03, 2025

    Loved Polablue! I had to lecture often and as usual late with my slides.
    If I remember correctly black letters or lines became white on blue background, same as a film Kodak had.
    True , very low ASA, very poor tolerance to under/ over exposure, if past expiration date developer strip did not peel off cleanly, specially in edges but before Powerpoint and digital projector it was invaluable in getting monochrome slides: white letters or lines blue background
    No middle tones.
    Best was slide mounter/ Polaroid slide mounts
    Fairly expensive compared to regular film.
    They are still in good shape today 40 years later
    Tried Polachrome for color, awful, very dense, dark, murky colors

    ReplyDelete

If you are trying to spam, sell digital crap, link to an external sales site, it will be deleted. I welcome respectful dialog and comments.