Is this the end?

Yesterday, all of the online sites were abuzz with the news that Fuji was no longer going to produce FP-100C, the last peel-apart film for Polaroid pack-film cameras.   We should have been warned when Fuji stopped manufacturing FP-3000B in 2013 -- the beautiful black and white film that many of us really loved.  I love using the Polaroid Land Cameras -- the results are fun, unique, and the Fuji color film is especially vibrant.  

Some rumors claim that the FP100C that Fuji has been selling was the last batch anyway, and whatever is left in stock anywhere is all that remains.  Consequently, prices have shot up from the $8.99/pack that I paid last year, to over $32.00 on some sites.   I have about 4 packs left, so I will use what I have for special projects, and that will be it for me.  Likewise, prices for pack film cameras will tumble.

Will another company take over production the way the Impossible Project did?  I wouldn't hold my breath.  It's a niche market. Fuji is making a ton of money on its Instax film.  They have the market cornered there.   The newest pack-film cameras are 15 years old or so, and the film represents a small percentage of sales.

It is ironic that the announcement from Fuji came on the anniversary of Edwin Land's death - March 1, 1991.

The end.

Polaroid Joy

Last weekend, Adrienne and I made a trip back to Amenia, NY to visit her family, and to photograph the family cottage on Twin Lakes, CT which was about to be sold.  I brought my Nikon D90, Nikon F3HP, Hasselblad 500C, Nikon 1J1, and my Polaroid 250.  While I spent a lot of time documenting the cottage with my D90, I used the Polaroid quite a bit with the people.  Now, in case you have forgotten, the Polaroid 250 Land Camera is a bellows camera with a nice rangefinder focus, and takes the traditional Polaroid pack film for 3 1/4" x 4 1/4" prints.  Wait! Didn't Polaroid stop selling film? Yes.  But Fuji makes color and black and white pack film for these cameras.  It's Fuji FP100C and FP3000B films that work with the old Polaroid pack film cameras.

As soon as I pulled out the 250, I got all kinds of comments, from "Is that an old Polaroid?"; "That camera must be really old!"; "I used to have one of those."; to "Can you still get film?"  Even better though, was the immediacy of the results and people's appreciation on seeing something they could physically handle.  To me, that is one of the great things about Polaroid images.  They are nearly immediate, and TANGIBLE.  Not some file sitting on a smart phone that's hard to show off, not a file on a hard drive, but a thing - an object - which obviously has substance and value, and can sit on the shelf or on the fridge, or in an album, as a reminder of an event, a person's love, or a place.  There is only that ONE image, and you have it.  (Well, of course, they can now be scanned in, etc., but not if I gave one away.)  I shot 3 packs of the color film, and gave some of the prints to people, and kept the rest to share electronically.   The people that received prints were so appreciative.  That's one of the underestimated things about photography.  The power to capture a moment is one thing, but to hold that moment in your hand as a 2D representation, unchanging, independent of any other device, is one of the reasons photography became so popular. Especially since a drawing takes way too long.
It used to be that people shot Polaroids all the time, and they were a regular part of parties, gatherings, etc.  Today, everyone uses their cell phones.  Oh, you can go to the Internet to see the photos, etc., but having a print of your very own is a more precious thing.
I like the palette of the Fuji color pack film.  It's colorful, and self-limiting -- you don't have to worry about leaving the positive/negative together for too long.  I hope Fuji keeps producing it for quite a while, as this 250 still has a lot of life left in it.

A few examples from the weekend:

 Nick and his dad, Bill, looking over at a Polaroid I had taken of the two of them just minutes before.  Bill carefully took it back to his truck so as not to lose it .

 Blue doors at an old building in Millerton, NY.

 The Murphy clan - all the children of Charlotte (87) and Jim (deceased) Murphy.
Top row - Brian, Andy, Charlotte (my mother-in-law)
Middle - Cathleen, Adrienne (my wife), Elizabeth
Bottom: Bob, Larry.

 Larry and Bob share a story.

 The Amenia Library.  Amenia is in Dutchess County, NY - a largely rural and hilly part of the state.  It took a while to get used to driving there, compared to the flatness of Michigan.

Amenia Burial Ground - a cemetery that is populated by graves from the late 1700s to mid 1800s.

Anastasia, caught in the gravity well of a hammock. Her mom really appreciated a Polaroid.

World Wide Pinhole Photography Day

WWPPD has become quite a big thing. Each year, hundreds (thousands?) of photographers shoot pinhole cameras on the last Sunday of April. Each person uploads a single image to the WWPPD web site, and it is a blast to see what other folks have been shooting.  This year, I had plans to spend a good chunk of the day doing pinhole shots.  However, the weather turned out to be overcast and drizzly all day.  Not the best weather for doing any kind of shooting, unless you are under an umbrella.  However, I was determined to shoot something besides an indoor still-life.  I loaded up my Polaroid pinhole camera -- it uses pack film, and is a former Tektronix oscilliscope camera.  I think I made it about 8 years ago, and removed the front part of the camera and replaced it with a new front and a pinhole.  Simple.  I am on the third pinhole iteration, and the current size is about right.   The film I used this time around is the Fuji 3000B - the 3000 ISO black and white film.  For a day like today, it was at the edge of the usable range, being that my exposures were between 2 and 3 seconds.  I could not have used it in full sun.  Certainly a good choice for indoor pinholery, though.

I managed to do some test shots outside the house to gauge my exposure, and then headed over to Parker Mill, hoping for some images of the flowing water at Fleming Creek.  Between the time I did the test shots and got on the road, it had started raining as a fine mist.  I soldiered on, hoping for the best.  Fleming Creek was actually flowing quite well, and the small island I often shoot from was surrouned by the creek.  I was able to hop over the overflow, and set up on the island.  The ground beneath the trees had been scoured by the high water of the previous week, and looked pretty interesting.  I was able to finish off the pack of film, but with the rain, my prints got wet, and though I had them in a box, some emulsion still got scraped while being jostled on the way back to the car.  So, if you shoot in the rain with pack film, carry a dry box to keep the prints in.    Here are a few shots from the day.

A Short Ohio Road Trip - Part 1.

On Saturday, my friend Abby Alvarez and I went for a drive into NW Ohio, driving first to Findlay, and then to Mt. Victory, and back to Kenton, with many small towns in between. I think of such trips as fishing expeditions, one never knows what the catch will be. First of all, Findlay grew a lot during the late 1800s when petroleum was found in the area. It's the seat of Hancock County, and Marathon Petroleum still has a commanding building on Main street. However, there is a manufacturing industry in the area, and unlike many Michigan towns, it seems to be diversified in its economy. There are many really nice homes on the main streets -- some very beautiful Victorian painted ladies, and those alone call for another visit. We arrived in late morning, and parked on a side street after driving around a bit, to see where we should start out with our cameras. We walked across the street, and Abby spied some cameras in a shop window, and I noted some collectible-type things inside, as well, and then I recalled that Matt Marrash of the Film Photography Project had interviewed a woman in Findlay. I had no sooner had that thought when a woman came out of a shop next door, and started talking to us, and opened the door of the place we were looking into - it was her! Leslie Hunsberger, herself. We had a good laugh about that and that we have both been interviewed on the Film Photography Project's Podcast. It was fun discussing photography with Leslie, and how young people are taking up film photography. Leslie consented to being photographed while holding her favorite Polaroid camera (which she did use on the street that day).

After that, Abby and I walked the back alleys, and streets in search of subjects, which were abundant. I mostly shot with my Nikon D90, but also used my Nikon N8008 with XP-2, and my Holga 35BC with XP-2. There were lots of interesting details, some odd buildings, signs, and in general, many new things to shoot and add to our respective collections of images. As the day wore on, we sought lunch, and had a good one at Logan's Irish Pub. As we traveled about, I kept seeing murals on brick walls in every town that we explored. Some are very complex, and I photographed every one I saw. That could obviously be a theme for a show all by itself.

The Veteran's memorial in downtown Findlay.

The back of a bank in downtown Findlay. It's almost hard to tell where reality begins.

Mt. Victory, OH

Kenton, OH - Apparently the Gene Autry cap gun saved Kenton during the Great Depression. Quite the mural!

Late in the day, and almost sunset - we were driving back and saw this in Oakwood, OH -- a bar called the Landing Strip (not to be confused with the strip club near Detroit of the same name!).

There is a lot more to show from this trip to NW Ohio, and that will have to wait for part 2. Be ready for some hardware images :)

Playing With Polachrome

OK, yes, it's another post about me playing with an expired film again. This is more than expired -- it's no longer produced. My friend Geoff Foster gave me a cassette and the processor cartridge of Polacolor 35mm film. It is a 35mm transparency film that was produced by Polaroid up until maybe 5 or 6 years ago. Before the days of Powerpoint, it was great to have a film that could be quickly processed to make slides for presentations, etc. Polaroid produced several high-contrast films for that purpose (I have shot a roll of Polablue film) for graphs and text, but Polacolor was intended for full-color rendition of a subject. At an ISO of 40 -- not a fast film and kind of grainy. As you'll see it has its own look.

According to the Land List:
* Film speed: ASA 40
* Color
* Sold in 12 and 36 exposure rolls.

NOTES: Polachrome is the technological successor to the Polavision instant movie system introduced in the late 1970's. [See the notes regarding Polavision Type 608 film for some details about how this film works.] By the way, one significant difference between Polachrome and Polavision film is the way the 'negative' is handled. [All Polaroid instant positive films involve a photographic negative somewhere, even if you don't normally see it.] With Polachrome, the negative is part of that black coating you can see on the film during loading. This black coating gets stripped away at the end of the development process, leaving just the positive transparency. The black coating (assuming it strips off the way it's supposed to) ends up back in the processing cartridge, which is then discarded. The old Polavision film, however, had both film and processing materials within the same self-contained package, so there was no way to 'discard' the negative after development. Therefore, Polavision film was designed so that the negative layer would simply remain on the film, but turn transparent after a short period of time. Apparently, this process wasn't quite perfect, and resulted in somewhat reduced contrast compared with the newer Polachrome film.

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I tried the film out today -- put the roll into my Minolta X-700 to give that camera some use for a change. I didn't know if the film had lost any sensitivity, but I shot it at and ISO of 40 just the same. This evening, I ran the film through the Polaroid Autoprocessor -- a box with cranks that winds the film along with its processing cartridge, and after about 2 minutes, the film was ready to take out and examine.

Unfortunately, the black backing (the negative) did not come off in the processor, so I ended up soaking the film in fixer for 5 minutes and then washing in water, and ran the film between my rubber-gloved fingers to pull the stuff away. It worked, but the emulsion is pretty soft, and I ended up scratching the transparency film. In any case, it was interesting to play with the film and the fact that I got anything at all was a complete surprise!

Here are some results: