Saturday, February 16, 2008

Ode to 600 Film








Polaroid land film will only be available through 2009! Does that affect you personally?

The first land camera that we had in our house was roll film. Mother had a garage sale and made enough money to buy the camera for daddy for Father's Day. She sold a $150 fox collared coat for $5.00 and a never worn dress up red taffeta dress with a black lace overlay for $2.50, obviously to make enough money for a camera, she needed to clean out her over full closet!! But that is another blog or another day.




I have no idea how much the prints cost, I just know it was really fun to see the picture shortly after it was taken. For those of us who remember that old land camera, we remember the little tube of goop that came with it. We remember we had to put that coating on in order to preserve the picture. Last fall, in an old trunk, I found some of those early Polaroid pictures. The images were lost in the uncoated images and curled as if in full rigor. The only picture I took with that camera which is still preserved is only preserved because it was published in the 1960 Lincoln High School Prowler yearbook. It is a picture of Larry, Tim, and Jack, who would, in the 1961 yearbook be the three top scorers in hockey.

Sometime after Daddy got that first camera, an apparatus came out made by Polaroid, where you could copy the pictures. The original was put on the glass. A full roll of film was placed into the machine.


As Polaroid developed new improved cameras, daddy was probably first in line. Many of the pictures that he took were of construction jobs, pets, and outdoor winter scenes. Most of those photographs which were taken outside in the winter, did not process well. They are underdeveloped and dark. With technology of today, we can adjust these pictures making them worthy to tell the story of which they were first intended. If you have some of these pictures, work with them and surprise yourself.

Mother and Daddy traveled. Rather than buy postcards of where they were, they would take pictures of the landscape with one of them in the picture. The pictures they took in Hawaii and mailed the prints. During this era, the images came with a hard backing one applied to the picture.


When I first moved to Fargo, Tom had a Polaroid which he used to take pictures of fish. No person-just fish! :-) he was my teacher for fishing at the end of the first fishing season I presented him with the new Polaroid camera. These pictures didn't have the hard back use for mounting, like the postcards my parents sent. However they took the pictures and retain their color. The camera also had light settings.

The first digital camera seemed a grand solution for taking pictures of fish, taking pictures of fish and people, and all other sorts of photography. Mr. Johnson held back and use the Polaroid until nearly the last packet of film was gone. Yet, even a couple of summers ago, he was rooting in the boat bag looking for a Polaroid camera to take pictures. He made his conversion last summer. The coat closet here at the house, acts as a resting place for cameras we no longer use. Not only does this include Polaroid camera's but 35mm cameras as well. All the trendy equipment, meaning digital, are stored in a suitcase along with a mini printer used to print digital pictures well at the lake.

Polaroid introduced its first camera on April 21, 1948. What does the company offered today? Enjoy the article:



LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- Once celebrated for cameras that made their own prints, Polaroid Corp. plans to update the concept this year by selling a portable printer for images on cell phones and digital cameras.
Polaroid's new printer is a little bigger than a deck of cards and connects to phones by USB or Bluetooth.





And like those old Polaroid instant-film cameras, the new printers should have a wow factor: they require no ink, because they employ a thermal printing technology from startup Zink Imaging Inc.
The 8-ounce printers, are due to go on sale around back-to-school time for about $150, Polaroid and Zink announced Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show.


Once connected to a phone or camera by Bluetooth wireless or the USB port, the printers need less than a minute to churn out 2-inch-by-3-inch pictures, which can be peeled off a backing and used as stickers. Sheets of paper for the device will cost about 40 cents each, less if bought in bulk.

Pretty nifty, don't you think?
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