Instant Fun

I confess that between just always being very busy and all the other photographic projects I have dabbles in I seem to have totally neglected the Polaroid 300 instant camera my son gave me for Christmas last year. I recall taking a handful of pictures of my grand kids and giving them the little business card sized photos and then getting distracted by life, work and other things.

Recently I pulled the little Polaroid camera out and started playing with it again. It still had half of the original film pack left so I took a few photos to scan and see what the results would look like. The above photo is a Thanksgiving bouquet sitting in the kitchen window right below a florescent light fixture but with very little other light. Of course the flash seems to go off every time you push the shutter even when outside in daylight so what light you see here is mainly the effect of the flash. The film is supposed to be ISO 800 so it's easy’ to have the colors wash out and the picture is so small the resolution and detail isn’t what I’m accustomed to from my other film cameras. Of course I did not use a high quality scanner either. This is from my office printer/copier/scanner that I use for day to day tasks. A few tweaks in Picasa helped but as I have said before I am not a post processing kind of guy so what you see is pretty much what you get when you take one of these little pictures and scan it on your normal, everyday scanner.

Here’s another shot my son took of me in my “dress clothes.” This one was outside in partial shade on a bright day. The camera has a couple settings to help get the right exposure. The first picture was taken with the “inside” or “dark” setting and this one was taken with the “sunlight” or “fine” setting. There are also settings for bright sunlight (clear) and cloudy. Trial and error is a little expensive at about $1 per shot but with only four settings it’s quick and easy to get the hang of things with this fun little camera – and that is really what it is all about – FUN!

By the way, you can once again get the Polaroid type film and cameras we all knew and loved in the last century thanks to the efforts of “The Impossible Project.” 

 (http://www.the-impossible-project.com/?nointro=1 )

These are the folks that would not accept the decision of Polaroid to shut down and stop all production of instant film& cameras back in 2008. They put together a team that bought and resurrected the last instant film factory and have been revitalizing the whole instant film industry ever since.

In addition the camera that I have and the photos taken above came from Polaroid who still make the 300 model cameras and film. Fuji also continues to make similar instant film and cameras and film for the older Polaroid cameras.