Blade Runner 2049: image and inconsistency

First, the real motive for this is to avoid finishing a piece on three or four Canon p/s cameras from the 1990s and 2000s that you must try.

Let me start by saying this is a fantastic movie. Definitely worth 3 hours. If you liked the original, this is a distant continuation that is within bounds for narrative. And if Roger Deakins does not get an Oscar for this, there is no God, and many of us therefore will be able simplify our planning for the future.

But… I can’t resist taking Villeneuve’s masterpiece to task for some of its strange inconsistencies, not the least of which have to do with photography and technology. I am going to avoid discussing things I have seen elsewhere. Don’t read this if you want to avoid spoilers. Or if you want to read something coherent and not written in a sinus medication fever dream (thanks, autumn weather…).

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Where are our black-border Polaroids? A central reference point of the first Blade Runner was photographs: Leon’s pictures of his friends, Rachael’s snapshot with her mom, and Deckard’s oddly anachronistic picture with an (iced tea? beer can?) and his ex-wife (or maybe that was his dad and mom?). Of course, the hard copies were all Polaroids with black borders and really cool red imprinting. The Blade Runner Curse, of course, would drive Polaroid out of business some 26 years later. Ok, not.

Photographs played a central role in the original movie – so much so that characters like Leon would risk death to retrieve collections of them. They stood in as a proxy for history – and a past. Replicants used them like holy cards. These elements are completely missing in BR 2049; the past is prepackaged – so much so that its consumers like Officer K even know it is fake. That seems to defeat the purpose of fake memories, does it not?

One of the coolest pieces of “not-quite-yet” technology you see in BR 2049 – related to the Sapper Morton scene and visible just for an instant – is a printed still photo with motion. That comes up but once. This would require one of the thinnest and most elegant power sources ever invented. Despite this super-cool print technology, photo drones are somehow larger than they are in backward old 2017, except for Niander Wallace’s vision drones, which looks like a combination of massage stones and every cheap electronic device sold on Ebay in 2003. The one constant is the massive and invasive image advertising; in the original, it was made up of blimps and Jumbotrons; now it is enormous holograms that know you’re looking – and interact with you. They even managed to jam a Frank Sinatra hologram into a Sony bottle. But by far the most incredible use of images is in the flickering holographic slugfest that Officer K and Deckard have in Las Vegas. This a perfected version of the distraction technique used by Scaramanga in the Man with the Golden Gun. And by “perfected,” I mean that Hervé Villechaize is not providing color commentary over a loudspeaker.

Through an eyeball scanner darkly. This whole thing at the beginning is actually absurd. Officer KD6-3.7ABCDEFGHIJK (no wonder Joi wants to call him “Joe”) goes to a remote location, the last known location of Sapper Morton. He sees a photo of Morton’s face on his car computer. Police procedures then (weirdly) require him to get close enough to a heavily-built, military-model, killer clone to scan a serial number on his sclera with a UV light whose bulb has to pulse for some reason. The clone will display this number this voluntarily, of course. Right. Then K has to cut said eye out and put it on a little scanner. To get paid. After killing a guy three times his size, of course.

The problem is that none of this is actually necessary. Morton is a manufactured product, and if there is no other way to identify him, facial recognition computing should have identified him within a reasonable doubt. And K should have aired Morton out as soon as he saw him.

But why the eyeball cutting? LAPD is coming out to close out the crime scene anyway (remember how Officer K comes back to a sealed scene – which he then violates?) Presumably a digital photo of a dead Morton would suffice until backup arrives to provide reinforcement. Except that we need the visceral thrill/horror. Because Chew’s eye shop in the first movie.

Also, did you notice that police body cameras don’t exist in this universe? I would think that if you have humanoid slaves running around with guns, you’d want to make sure that Miranda rights are being read and that no one is getting killed for a broken taillight on a Spinner.

Wood. We learn late in the movie that wood is so valuable that you could trade a small amount of it for a “real” goat. Niander Wallace’s office is full of it. So why didn’t we see Officer K strap Sapper’s tree to the top of his Spinner and take it? Ok, maybe a stretch, but somebody would have taken it.

Slaves clones that have holographic AI girlfriends? Let’s get back to this “getting paid” thing. Officer K is a Replicant, and a Nexus-9 “obedience” model at that. The entire K story is weird because we are told right at the beginning that he is a Replicant. It is implied that Replicants are second-class citizens. And yet K:

• Gets paid above his living expenses, hence the emanator.
• Rents and inhabits human housing (and a fairly big place by Manhattan standards) with no supervision.
• Has a full suite of home automation.
• Gets to drink the same whisky his human boss does.
• Apparently has enough leisure time to read books.
• Gets to smoke.
• Gets his 2 seconds of pure water in the shower, which is probably as much as anyone gets.

In light of this, you can only wonder what the legal status of Replicants might be. It would actually have to be pretty good. I guess they have to do what their bosses tell them to (“join the club,” said every 20th century office worker ever) and can’t reproduce. Given where we saw Replicants in 2019 in the previous movie, you know, in offworld kick murder squads, mining colonies, garbage collection, you would think Officer K should be living in the basement of police HQ, eating gruel, living like a monk, reciting his Nabokov and liking it. Right?

So K is basically a human for all external intents and purposes. But then his department apparently tells his colleagues that he is a clone (so much for HIPAA… thanks, HR) and his memories are baloney. Coco the Mortician even uses the term “skin job” in front of him. That’s pretty gutsy considering that K could probably kill him with his little finger. But somehow it also becomes known to K’s neighbors that he is a “tin soldier” (ahem, who leaked this?). Wouldn’t you want your hunter-killers to stay on the down-low? When you’re going to out your employee/slave, why would you even bother making blade runners look like average people? Other Replicants seem capable of detecting their own kind, so it’s not even good cover.

Joi but no Luv. Ok. Back to the point. Part of K’s home automation is his AI girlfriend Joi. Understand that in this universe, there has been a history of violent mutinies by past models (due in part to their emotional explorations…). Clearly this is such an issue that you have to put the Baseline Test on even the new submissive models. And yet they allow K and his friends to have a technological toys for which they might develop affection? Granted, there are many who would become clone slaves if Ana de Armas was part of the deal. But still. And speaking of which, what the hell kind of holographic technology would allow Joi to appear outside a vehicle, through an opaque door? There is technology. And then there is physics. And then there is the need to write in a touching scene when Ryan Gosling is knocked out and in danger?

Replicant escorts but no pimps. Okay, so Mariette (Mackenzie Davis) looks really weird and crazy-eyed all the time. Because Mackenzie Davis. And the idea of a Replicant-Replicant-Hologram (RRH) ménage-à-trois is only slightly more weird – because it requires a variety of wraparound projection that does not exist in our universe. But who is Mariette’s pimp? Remember, in this universe, all Replicants are (expensive) capital goods owned by someone or some company.  They don’t reproduce (I guess that saves money on birth control for the escorts?), and as far as anyone knows, they are never freed from their non-human legal status. If Mariette’s a Nexus-8, she should be on an, um, kill list. If she’s a Nexus-9, she should have never left her employer. And who is that? The government? LAPD?

Let’s back up a step. How does an AI hologram hire an escort for her owner (or licensee, I guess….)? The ability to enter commercial transactions, to live in your own house, and to associate with whomever you like are rights associated with humans. Or Replicants. But now computer programs?

And for all of her baseline testing, it doesn’t freak Chief Joshi out that her would-be sexbot is letting his virtual girlfriend spend all of his paychecks on cheap booze and hookers? Is she even detecting that? She’s pretty much the worst detective ever (where’s the eyeball of the child   But her outfits are good. Not as good as Luv’s, but still respectable.

Bald man in the yellow box. This dude is not a Replicant? He claims to have remembered the blackout as a child. But this is the most android-looking guy ever to show up in this film series. Also, can “born humans” actually see in this color light?I guess if you’ve worked in a Philippe Starck hotel in the early 2000s.

Optical memory. Ok, so a background assumption is that there was some massive EMP event that eliminated all electronic records. Which is fine, except for the fact that Tyrell (and now Wallace) apparently stored everything in optical format immune from electromagnetic pulses: cats-eye marbles. Shooters, from the size. Why not just say that everything was stored on magnetic tape and that it got wiped by the pulse? If Pan-Am and Atari still exist in that universe, I’m sure that 4mm LTO does.

Wallace’s phantom security video. One of the more screwy things in the original BR is the lack of security cameras. I mean, Roy Batty manages to smoke Tyrell by getting in through an elevator with no camera – and without ever being seen by a security camera in the Grand Poobah’s bedroom? Same with Leon and Holden earlier in the movie (where are the metal detectors?). We see video of the VK test, but apparently no one is able to track Leon on the way out of the building. And yet, when it’s time to research Rachael when K comes to corporate HQ, here are a bunch of security videos that were taken in Tyrell’s office. And conveniently, they are shot from the POV of the original Rachael-Deckard introduction scene. Not from the Voigt-Kampff machine, which only scans eyes.

Gaff. I am so glad that they fixed the color balance on Gaff. I mean in the first movie, Edward James Olmos must have had jaundice — or someone had swung the Lightroom tint slider the wrong way to “acting in yellow-face.” Also, it’s apparent that in the 30 years between the movies, they taught Gaff how to speak in accent-free English and got him that surgery to fix those weird glowing yellow eyes. The LAPD must have great continuing education and awesome health insurance.

Props qua props. In Vegas, note that the readout on K’s scanner says that radiation is “nominal.” Which means normal. So the fact that Deckard is there does not bear on people’s weird need for him to be an android. And when Luv & her henchmen show up, the henchmen, inexplicably, are wearing gas masks. Why? If they are replicants, they would not be bothered by anything on site (because humans would not). There is no reason for them to be human, since Luv presumably would not be commanding human bodyguards. If they’re human, they also would not need the masks at all. So this is just for optics, so to speak? To make the guys faceless?

Stelline’s lab and that Zeiss thingie. So we get to Ana Stelline’s office. It’s like the holodeck from Star Trek: the New Generation. She’s got this thing with dials. Not sure I got a good look at it, but the number of settings and third-stop increments mean that it must have been made by Zeiss. When K comes in, she is generating a memory of a 20th-century birthday party. Which she could not have seen. It gets weirder when you realize that she programmed the wooden horse memory in the third person. You know, like in Rocky IV when Apollo Creed died and Rocky remembered running with him on the beach (in a completely heterosexual way). How did Stelline know what she herself looked like? I don’t think the San Diego orphanage/dystopian Foxconn plant had a lot of mirrors.

Syd Mead! Las Vegas is pretty clearly either a Mead design or Mead homage. The influential industrial designer (exported from Detroit, FYI) left his fingerprints all over this movie. But a really nice touch is that the K’s spinner looks like a DeLorean (n.b., it’s a Peugeot, which supplied DeLorean with engines), but the bad guys drive spinners that look like 1963 Lincolns that would have been in design when Mead was at Ford. That said, I don’t want to be the one to say it, but the production design of BR 2049 is not very consistent with the original. The Mead/Scott design for the original involved recycling and retrofitting old buildings. So unless the original was all shot in the Fourth Sector, there is a lot of explaining to be done about where all the pipes and ducts have gone – as well as what happened to all of the Asian people.

The law. Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”….The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” (Tr. Ian Johnston). 

It’s common knowledge (at least among people who pretend to have remembered college lit) that Joe K is like Josef K of Kafka’s Trial. What you may not have connected is that visually, K’s approach to Deckard’s casino is actually an homage to the cartoon short that opens Orson Welles’ adaptation of the Trial. Except that Welles is narrating from “Before the Law,” an unfinished short story. I don’t know who in the production is channeling Melville and Eco, but at some point you come to the realization that this story has cadged half of all religion and western culture (for starters, Moses; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; Pinocchio; Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist; Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, World War II soldiers and aviators (“[GI] Joe”), tech moguls…)

The stars. So an image that appears early on is where Niander Wallace makes a statement that “we should own the stars.” Stars only appear once visually, in the peyote-and-are-they-eating-Deckard’s-dog? scene. But Ana Stelline is a reference to “little stars,” meaning that the key to this mystery is on earth.

Elvis! No comment on what went on in the casino, and it’s an awesome sequence, but are the holographic projectors of the future really a bunch of projection TVs from the 1970s with R, G and B lenses? Or are these DLP projectors gone really, really wrong?

Joi (the reprise). This is just a nerdy technical point – when Joi appears naked in the huge billboard near the end, did you notice that her color scheme is that of a person shot in 720nm infrared? Including the black eyes? It’s actually pretty impressive, when you consider that the scene was shot live and optically, not composited in with a computer.

Ok. Back to writing up some Sure Shots. If you want to see a fantastic deconstruction of the original Blade Runner, check out Typeset in the Future. That article even shows you what is in the dummy text used in props.

Don’t jump to instant conclusions about the Fujifilm-Polaroid litigation

It’s been a mere couple of days, and there has been a lot of Internet Indignation over the idea that PLR IP (the successor to Polaroid’s intellectual property) would demand that Fujifilm pay to license the square format for Instax Square. Most of what I have seen is based on incomplete suppositions about the law — and the history of instant film in the 21st century. A lot of comments say – in so many words – that PLR is just a bunch of greedy [——s] trying to cash in. You’re entitled to your opinion, but this is far more nuanced a situation than most reflexive internet commenters realize.

Why is PLR demanding royalties?

Three points here. First, the law of intellectual property (patents, trademarks, copyrights) is designed to confer legalized monopolies, not to promote competition or assure that consumers have the best selection or best price. It is designed to compensate creativity, innovation, and brand-building/maintenance by giving the creator or its successor exclusivity for some period – or in the case of trademarks, indefinitely. Don’t confuse IP law with antitrust law, which does things like preserving competition in price and preventing agreements, business combinations, or sales practices that improperly leverage market power to make consumers pay more.

Second, intellectual property is transferrable. You can deride the idea of “cashing in on an IP portfolio,” but however distasteful you think it is, it’s perfectly permissible under the law. In fact, you’ll see on pretty much every patent application ever filed that patents are assigned to workers, who then have to fork the rights over to their employers. Patents are licensed all the time, and there are thousands of instances where an inventor does not see any part of the profits because he or she cashes out. Some companies make it their business to own and license patents for money. Those same companies sometimes fund (or pay off) the work that led to the patent in the first place. The average inventor lacks the capital to realize ideas; if it weren’t for investors, most consumer products you use on a daily basis simply would not exist.

Finally, PLR absolutely has the right to “cash in” on any valid IP it obtained in the wake of the Polaroid bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does not automatically cancel a company’s IP; in most bankruptcies, that is liquidated to pay the creditors.  Think of it this way – General Motors Corporation went out of business about ten years ago. All of its rights in the various products it sold went to General Motors LLC  – which like PLR IP was a new company with none of the same owners. The current GM has the ability (from an ownership standpoint) to sue anyone for infringing any trademark that was ever used by any prior version of GM. So PLR IP stands in the shoes of old Polaroid for ownership. That doesn’t mean that the intellectual property is valid; it just means that PLR can sue.

How did this lawsuit start?

Next, let’s talk about how this lawsuit started: Fujifilm filed a declaratory action to establish whether or not it can sell Instax Square without paying a royalty. That is a proactive step to take. Fujifilm got a nasty-gram from Polaroid, Polaroid did not file suit, and Fuji wanted to bring the issue to a head before it distributed too much Instax Square and ran up too much in potential liability. So it was Fuji that decided to spend a few million on the exercise.

What is Fujifilm’s rationale?

I would posit that if this suit is not just being used by Fujifilm as negotiating leverage, this will be a long, expensive, dragged out piece of litigation and not necessarily because of anything PLR will do. It may well make this a mega-case. But Fujifilm’s own arguments are all based on concepts that are neither slam-dunks, nor ones that will be decided short of expensive expert work or a trial. Fujifilm has three principal arguments in its complaint (reproduced here but condensed and consolidated):

FUJIFILM does not use the “square within a square” form factor of its INSTAX instant film as a trademark, nor as any other indicia of the source of its products… FUJIFILM’s use of the “square within a square” form factor for its INSTAX instant film has not caused, nor is it likely to cause, confusion as to the source, affiliation, or sponsorship of FUJIFILM’s products and services or Defendants’ products or services.

Likelihood of confusion could be a challenging issue for Fujifilm. The issue is likely  going to be addressed in a confusion survey in which a couple thousand people are going to be shown an Instax Square print. For those in the survey group who aren’t familiar with Instax, what will they call the prints?

Defendants do not currently use and have not used in commerce the marks that are the subject of the PLR Trademark Registrations for any of the subject goods set forth in the PLR Trademark Registrations.

This is an abandonment argument. In general, there is a rebuttable presumption that when a party does not exercise a trademark for three years, that it is abandoned. That is not an ironclad rule because “intent to resume” is a way around that. Moreover, bankruptcy standing alone is not generally recognized to cause abandonment.

Abandonment requires clear and convincing evidence to prove – meaning that you don’t get a verdict or a judgment based on the 50.0000001% certainty standard in your garden variety civil case. In fact, “clear and convincing evidence” is the same heightened standard used to prove fraud. It is also more akin to “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Now take a look at what is going to get presented to a judge (or a jury if PLR demands one):

• Polaroid Corporation made SX-70 film (the subject of the trademark/trade dress dispute here) starting in the early 1970s.
• Polaroid sued Kodak in 1976 when Kodak introduces line of integral film cameras that competed with the SX-70.
• At about the same time Kodak instant went off the market, but before the Kodak case was resolved, Polaroid and Fujifilm settled their own patent dispute, resulting in (among other things) a territorial distribution agreement keeping Fujifilm integral out of the United States, licensing the patented integral technology to Fuji, and giving Polaroid access to Fujifilm’s video technology.
• In 1991, Kodak and Fuji settled for $925 million, making instant film the biggest patent case in U.S. history.
• In 1998, Fujifilm started making some sizes of Instax (its name for all instant films).
• In 2001, Polaroid imported Instax Mini 10/20 film (which it sold as “300” film) and sold the  camera as the Mio. In the same year, it filed for reorganization and its assets were sold to an affiliate of  Bank One. The company that bought the assets was named Polaroid Holding Company, the old Polaroid Corporation became Primary PDC, Inc., and PHC began doing business under Polaroid Corporation.
• In 2004, Polaroid stopped making the negatives necessary for integral film. This, it thought, would be a decade’s worth of stock. Wrong!
• In 2005, Instax/Mio folded, as did Instax Wide, in the U.S.
• In 2005, Polaroid Corporation (PHC) was sold to Tom Petters.
• In 2008, Polaroid went out of business (when Petters was prosecuted for investment fraud) and stopped making chemical SX-70/600 style film (and in Europe, the raw materials stockpiled in 2004 had now been exhausted – 6 years ahead of predictions).
• During the 2008 liquidation, Florian Kaps – the largest online distributor for Polaroid – bought the 50,000 remaining packages of SX-70 film. He got Ilford onboard and spent $3.1 million buying the production equipment at Enschede (NL). With the help of good old PR extortion, he got Polaroid Europe to cooperate in allowing the workers to keep the plant running (albeit with re-engineered products).
• In the same year, Instax Wide and Mini came back under Fujifilm branding.
• In 2009, Polaroid’s IP was transferred to a new entity owned by an investor group. Notably, “Polaroid” was still being used to sell books and other things recalling the SX-70/600 instant print.
• In 2010, the Impossible Project released its first film based on Polaroid SX-70/600 format and concept.
• In 2012, Wiacezlaw “Slava” Smolokowski bought 20% of the Impossible Project at the behest of his son, Oskar.
• In 2014 (December) the Pohlad family bought the majority interest in new Polaroid for $70 million. Oskar Smolokowski becomes the CEO.
• In 2014, Slava Smolokowski (his father) became the biggest shareholder in the Impossible Project.
• In 2017 (January), Polaroid released the Pop 3×4 Zink (Zero Ink digital) amera that used the classic SX-70/600  borders.
• In 2017 (April), Fujifilm introduced Instax Square. The SQ10 camera renders digitally taken images on (arguably) SX-70-proportioned prints, just like the Pop. The difference is that it uses chemical film/paper rather than sublimation printing.
• In 2017 (May), Smolokowski (senior?) bought the Polaroid brand and IP, bringing both it and the Impossible Project under the same ownership. Presumably, Polaroid licensed its IP to Impossible. Certainly it licensed the name, and Impossible is now “Polaroid Originals.”
• At around the same time, PLR made demands on Fujifilm.
• In 2017 (November), Polaroid brought its trademark cancellation action in the Southern District of New York.

(and this is just the story of integral film – Polaroid and Fuji had other collaborations in pack film, for example, like Type 689, which reportedly was made by Fuji).

Ok. This is still not everything that has happened in the integral film world – but you get the point. A part of this suit, I’m sure, is going to be untangling exactly who owns what and what continuities exist. I’m also sure that both Fujifilm and PLR and Impossible Project spent a lot of money figuring this out in the few first months of the year. It’s actually interesting also that this suit does not name Polaroid Originals (née Impossible Project) or Smolokowski, since I think you’d want to resolve everything at once.

The alleged “design” of an instant film border frame with a thickened portion that is the subject of the PLR Trademark Registrations is purely functional…

This is probably going to be a lot of engineers doing exposition on ways to spread chemicals. Fujifilm will argue that a thickened border is necessary for the chemical pod. Too bad for curiosity’s sake that the papers that lay this all out will probably never see the light of day in terms of accessible court records. But query whether that will let them argue that the specific proportions of the print are functional. Dr. Land was a very detailed person when it came to designing things, so don’t be surprised if his notes reflect some intentional aesthetic choices.

The immorality of PLR’s demands?

PLR’s assertion of its rights is not unforeseeable, nor is there any indication that it is based on unethical thinking or behavior. First, the Smolokowski family has sunk probably tens of millions in Polaroid, a large sum in making the Impossible Project work, and getting the rights to resurrect SX-70 film – even in name. It has every incentive in the world to prevent what might be an assault on Polaroid’s historic core (and most recognizable) photographic product. If Fujifilm undercuts Impossible on price (which is almost a certainty), the only people who will buy Impossible film will be the ones who want both the SX-70 format and the particular camera that use the original style film.

Second, you might or might not wonder about why Fujifilm “just happened” to come out with a format clone of SX-70 if it isn’t to cash in on the hipster aesthetic. Is it a situation like in 2010: the Year we Make Contact (“All of these worlds are yours except Europa. Attempt no landings there”)? Or does every square format requires similar proportions? Is homage the most sincere form of flattery? Or is this a play on the back of a product that people remember even with a 10-year time-out under the Polaroid name? It could be all of these things – or none of them. That is what a court is going to decide in the Fujifilm case.

Finally, people should not harbor the illusion that Fujifilm is “committed” to film, operating a charity, or otherwise being some kind of noble stag attacked by the commoners. Like industry punching-bag Kodak, Fujifilm does things because they make money, and it has a pretty clear track record of stopping when those things does not. Because shareholders. Instax is supported because it makes money. Even according to Fuji’s own official histories, it was on its way out when a youth-oriented fad jumpstarted its failing heart. Other things (like pack film and many 35mm and 120 emulsions) were discontinued because they did not make money. If “SX-70” becomes another size in a portfolio of Instax formats that are in the meta sense disposable, it would be easy for Fujifilm to put Impossible out of business in year 1 (bricking every SX-70 and 600-series camera in existence) and blow away the format in year 3 because Wide (or whatever) sells better and the investment in camera and film cutting tooling is amortized. You may or not may feel comfortable putting all eggs in that green basket. Maybe you do if short-term price is your main concern.

Bottom line?

My prediction is that this will end in a settlement with a small royalty or cross-licensing of Fujifilm technology to Polaroid Originals. Fujifilm will get to sell square Instax, and Polaroid Originals will sell a slightly better version of its product. It’s an easy prediction. Both parties have a lot to lose here, and it’s how many IP fights are resolved.

 

Scanning 6×12 with the Polaroid Sprintscan 120 (or Microtek Artixscan120TF)

The Polaroid Sprintscan 120 (and its clone the Microtek Artixscan 120TF) presents an opportunity and two challenges.  The opportunity is a 6×24 scanning aperture in even the standard medium format carrier.  This allows you to scan really long negative strips or really long negatives. The challenges are keeping film flat and scanning a big frame consistently and conveniently.  If you have Silverfast 6.5 (or up), the following is a fairly simple way to address this.

First, get a glass carrier. Forget the one that Polaroid and Microtek sold.  It has too many dust surfaces and is so much wider than a 120 filmstrip that you will have misaligned strips (yes, it has little template thingies, but they are fairly pointless).  It is also exceptionally difficult to clean.  Instead, call up Focal Point in Florida (they actually made Polaroid’s original glass carrier) and have them make you a 3mm anti-newton glass that replaces the top plate of the normal 120 carrier.* If you sub a glass for the original top, the film will smash perfectly flat without needing any bottom glass (if you have used Durst enlargers, this is the same trick where you take a glass carrier and swap out the bottom glass for a negative plate).  When you scan, you will get the negative plus up to 2mm of black on all four sides (assuming that the cut ends have some margin around the actual image – and your camera is closer to 50mm frame heights than 55mm).

* Note that if this is cut correctly, it will not be able to slide. To remove the glass, you will need to pry it up using one of the cutouts along the side and a wooden barbecue skewer or other similar tool.  Note also that the “dull” side of the glass goes down on the negative (you can see which side is which by looking at a reflection of a light on the glass.

Second, load up the carrier.  Make sure that the negative is positioned in the bottom part of the carrier such that the film “margin” is visible in the leading edge and top and bottom edges of the carrier (you may not get top or bottom, depending on your camera – you definitely get both with a Noblex).  This will assure that you get your black border (so long as you did not cut your negatives into the image). To better align the negative, drop it into the carrier, turn the carrier so the short dimension is up-and-down,and then shake it until then negative strip squares with the channel in the carrier.

Third, boot up Silverfast. I am sorry to say that this does not work with Vuescan due to Vuescan’s apparent constant desire to reset exposure between frames no matter how you set it.  Set Silverfast for the following:

• 16-bit scanning
• 6×9 format
• maximize frame size by hitting Control-A (Intel) or Command-A (Mac) (yes, you will drag in ragged black edges and white margin)
• set batch mode
• disable “Auto on ADR,”
• set color filter to “green” (only if you are scanning b/w)
• set Negafix to Other-Other-Standard-Zero.

Fourth, do a prescan of both frames in the filmstrip function, select both frames, and do a prescan of the first frame. Now hit the “auto exposure” button (looks like a camera shutter).  This will set the exposure such to get a black and a white.  You only need to do this exposure correction once per roll of film (or even for numerous rolls shot and developed roughly equally).  You do not need to do the filmstrip part again ever.

Finally, do  a 1-2 batch scan.

At this point, you are covered for future editing and can use Photomerge on Photoshop to merge your work (you will probably have to downsample to 2000 dpi to get any type of speed on most machines).  For advanced productivity, pull the scans into Lightroom, enlarge the slide viewer mode until only two frames fit, and then you can see the pieces side by side (note, for the “flipped” scans, be sure you are looking at the correct halves.  Exposure bracketing can lead to confusing results at first.

The easiest way to correct the exposure is with the white/black eyedroppers in Photoshop’s Levels function, though Lightroom’s tools are very easy.

If you have to dust spot, use the Edit in Photoshop function in Lightroom and “edit original.”  This gives you access to the healing brush and spot healing brush, neither of which is available in Lightroom.

Why does this work?

First, you have eliminated 2 annoying dust surfaces on a bottom glass and created a carrier that will keep things flat and in place.  Periodically clean the AN glass.  I recommend an Ilford Antistaticum. If you fingerprint the glass, I would recommend using Stoner Chemical’s aerosol Invisible Glass, which is available at auto parts stores (it also works fantastically on household glass).  You can wipe it off with a paper towel, and then follow up with your Antistaticum.

Second, using the green channel for b/w means that only one CCD line will be used, making the scan go 3x faster and eliminating the “focus banding” you sometimes see with the Sprintscan and other scanners (this is related in part to “stitching” that occurs when the scanner goes back and forth to position each of the R, G and B lines on the same position).  In addition, green should be the sharpest color for non-APO optics used in scanners. If scanners are in fact apochromatic, it doesn’t matter which color you use.

Third, you have set up an exposure regime that will maximize your ability to merge the two halves (or really, left 3/4 and right 1/4) of the 6×12 image.  You can do most of the other steps with Vuescan, but you really have to go to heroics to lock it down.

Finally, you have used overlapping frames to get around the limitations of using the Polaroid with a Silverfast program that does not respect the hardware framing and is not easily adjusted.

Hopefully, that helps.

Disclaimer: all of this is at your own risk.

[Pola]roid rage

[2012-09-11] The latest piece of arcania to be pulled back from the edge of extinction is Polaroid pack film (3×4 film in a metal pack). The original was consistent so long as you walked along the razor’s edge of exposure, development, and shooting film that was in-date. The cameras were largely expensive (about $1,000 in today’s dollars), underfeatured by today’s standards (though aperture-priority AE was pretty cutting edge), and oversized. Polaroid pack film died a pretty rapid death as a consumer item, but it lived on for decades as a pro proofing tool (many old medium format cameras supported Polaroid backs that provided test images of varying sizes).

The original Polaroid films failed to develop and picked up color casts almost the very day they went out of date. Nevertheless, people pay big money on Ebay for expired Polaroid films to make intentionally bad pictures. Haven’t these people been schooled on Hipstamatic? This author will not descend into the fray of whether “vintage” or “distressed” photos are saving or destroying photography, but once you decide the look, why not choose the cheapest thing that achieves it?

Fuji picked up the baton with 100-speed color and black and white films and 3000-speed color. These films are, by any measure, better than the originals. The FP100C, in particular, is insensitive to overdevelopment, reasonably insensitive to overexposure, comes with long expiration dates, and almost never suffers from uneven development. It also comes with 10 shots per pack instead of the 8 of Polaroid. Amazing. The best part is that in bulk, FP100C is actually a lot cheaper than the Polaroid products it replaced. There is no more print/neg or extended range film, but Fuji is unbeatable for the volume products.

Limited choices

Let’s talk about the things that shoot Polaroid/Fuji pack film. As a preliminary point, you should really approach buying instant hardware the same way you should approach a relationship based primarily on sex: invest as little emotion as possible in it. Part of it is that you never know when Fuji is going to quit making the film (so don’t be left holding the bag, so to speak). Part of it is that Fuji’s film offerings are limited. And part of it is that as much as you fantasize about shooting in manual all the time, a well-calibrated automatic pack camera can deliver more consistent and reliable results (on calibration, see “Rehabilitation” and below).

1. Really big, really heavy interchangeable-lens cameras. The big three of Polaroid-capable cameras are the Polaroid 600SE; Mamiya Universal with Polaroid backs, Graflex XL with the Polaroid film back. These have the best viewfinders, the best lenses, and the best overall quality. They are also expensive and should come with gift certificates for chiropractors. These cameras can also take medium-format film (with the right adaptor on the 600SE). These have no meters and require no batteries. They have synch for electronic flash. You will get first-rate results for the lenses, all of which were designed in an era where Polaroid made a print-negative film, where a negative could be fixed and projection printed. Today, with the “enlargement” limited to about 3×4 inches, the optics on these cameras arguably are overkill.

If you want a good solution with minimal hacking, try a Graflex 4×5 Speed Graphic with the Polaroid 405 back (4×5 mounting plate, takes pack film). You get macro, rise and limited fall, tilt, and even rangefinder operation. Plus it looks like an awesome retro press camera. Because it is.

At the end of the day, anything that can be adjoined to a Polaroid back can be used as a pack-film camera. In fact, when you consider poor film flatness of pack film and the low precision of the packs (which unfortunately define your film plane), all of the 600SE’s specialization may be superfluous.

2. The 180/190/185/195. The 180, 185 and 190 (European 180) have the combined Zeiss viewfinder; the 195 (like the NPC remake of the 185**) has the two-window Polaroid finder (which is brighter but less convenient to use). They predominantly have relatively fast* Tominon lenses (who? oh, yeah, large format lenses don’t have to be that good…) with an oddball shutter that has two sets of leaves for extra light-tight-ness. They have x-synch, which is good for flash photography.

*for a Polaroid. The lenses range between a screaming f/3.8 or f/4.5. The 185 has an f/5.6 Mamiya lens – but given that Edwin Land made these for his friends, I’d bet the farm they are a lot better than the slightly faster Tominons.

**which aside from the name actually most resembles the 195 in features. The NPC remake is a much heavier-duty camera with a fixed, two-window rangefinder. The “185” appears to be a nostaglia touch for the Japanese market. If you want to buy an original 185, there is one on Ebay for the price of a small car. And no matter how many years into the future you read this article, it will probably still be there at that price.

These are cameras that you want to believe in. After all, the industrial design is incredible. The 180 in particular is a very elegant camera. But the genes of the automatic color pack cameras come out just like red hair and freckles (in fact, I have now been informed by two sources that Polaroid had parts and procedures for converting a 250 to a 180 and a 350 to a 190). The extension mechanism and focusing mechanism feel flimsy compared to the 110A/B or a Crown Graphic; the bellows are made of poor-quality material,* and the viewfinder (when it is properly aligned) looks cool and works well. But for $500 to $600, these are the best cameras if size and weight are driving your decision making.

*polyurethane for the cheapo pack camera; rubberized cheapo fabric material for the expensive cameras. I got a chuckle out of the fact that my 190 has grommets on the left side of the bellows – this would be used for the match-needle meter in the 185; apparently Polaroid was too cheap to make a separate 190 bellows!

Maintenance might be an issue (even more than it is with mechanical leaf-shutter cameras). These cameras typically are sold on Ebay by estate sale scavengers who believe that these are worth their weight in gold. The more-complicated-than-normal shutter design also pretty much guarantees that maintenance will be expensive and hard to arrange. This is not the kind of shutter that you squirt lighter fluid into, Ed Romney-style (if you do, I recommend quickly firing an old 200-volt Vivitar 283 using the sync port – you’ve already ruined the camera, so why not see it literally go up in flames?).

3. The 110A/110B/120 (originally designed for 30-series films). These cameras, if they have not been converted to pack film, are completely worthless (though the scavengers fail to comprehend this). The A has separate viewfinder/rangefinder windows and the B has them combined. Do not confuse the 110A and 110B with useless Polaroids such as the original 80*, 80A, 80B, 95, 95A, 95B**, 100, 110, 150, 160, 700, 800, 850, 900, J-33, J-66. Although these lesser cameras have the same basic chassis, they are either missing modern rangefinders or repairable lens/shutter assemblies – don’t pay a dime for them unless you are replacing a broken part from your 110A/B. The 120 is a “good” camera, essentially a 110B made in Japan. That said, the 110A/B came from an era when America was going places and everything had progressive, if not space-age names: Inconel-X, Rocketdyne, Johnsonite, Avanti. For the 120, Japan was also going places: postwar recovery.

*The Model 80 was called the “Highlander.” If there can only be one, then why did Polaroid make three?

** “Speedliner.” Based on this name, which sounded like a variety of Hudson 4-6-4 locomotive with aero cowlings, there was no chance this camera would make it out of the 1950s alive.

They are big, heavy cameras for which no native film is made (and has not been for decades). Converting them to pack film always requires the application of a hacksaw (or, more likely, bandsaw) and leaves a camera that – by modern standards – is big, heavy, relatively unwieldy to hold and focus, and they don’t really do anything that a 180-type camera does not. And these conversions are rarely pretty (Exceptions: Alpenhause and polaroidconversions.com, which both generate nicely finished units in a variety of colors). That the Ysarex was special because it had lanthanum glass is something of a modern myth: this came into vogue in the 1950s and 1960s, and many modern, high-performance lenses don’t have it. Rodenstock was not a high-quality, high-volume producer at the time – and the Ysarex was a 4×5 lens that was ported over (a 127mm was a common normal lens focal length for 4×5). According to one account I heard, Polaroid used the Ysarex because it was cheap if bought in bulk. How many Rodenstock lenses do you remember from 1950s and 1960s cameras? My bet is not many. Some Retina IIa cameras had Heligons, but that’s about it…

Conversions of the 110A/B cameras come in various other flavors, including taking 600SE backs (which bulks up the camera pretty considerably) and using 4×5 backs (and onto many of these, you can still adapt a 405 pack film holder or a standard rollfilm holder from a Speed Graphic – but why?!).

All of that said, the lens is well above the performance level of the automatic pack cameras, and the folding mechanism is rock-solid. From a mechanical standpoint, these make the 180/185/190/195 look a little wimpy (except for the NPC remakes, which are a lot less elegant but a lot more butch).

4. The 250/350/360/450. We’ll call these the “automatic pack cameras.” In general, these have a folding design, coated glass triplet 114mm f/8.8 lenses (about a 40mm in 35mm terms), an electronic shutter that runs from 10 sec to 1/1200 sec, six apertures (waterhouse stops) that are activated by permutations of an ASA setting and two scene settings. Bodies are stainless steel (or chromed plastic; I’ll let you hacksaw one to find out).

Depending on the model, you may get features like a mechanical or electronic development timer (neither of which really works for Fuji film with its 3-minute development time), distance-calibrated bulb flash (450), or distance-calibrated electronic flash (360). With the exception of the 360, these are not designed to be used with electronic flashes, but they can be converted with a small amount of effort.

This category also includes cameras such as the 100, 440, etc., but for reasons to be discussed below, they are not high-featured enough to merit the time and trouble of making them work.

5. All the rest. Polaroid made a lot of things that can be classified as garbage: varying combinations of plastic lenses, zone focus, and flashbulbs (but all of them shoot better and cheaper than a Holgaroid…). These cameras appear primarily designed to sell at a price point and to move as much Polaroid colorpack film as possible.* As you may have surmised, consumables are a big business – ask Fujifilm, which makes no hardware but sells millions of packs of peel-apart film a year. The one bright spot in the old stuff is the Big Shot, which uses X-synched flashcubes, has a long snout, and fixed-focus rangefinder. A favorite of Warhol, it is an eBay cause celebre.

* Were the names designed to be ironic? I mean, really, what “Reporter” would use a zone-focused folding camera that used flashcubes? Was the “Square Shooter” designed to photograph the non-hip? Some things are clear from the names: the “Big Swinger” is clearly designed with some capability for recording orgies. Let me know when you figure it out.

Konica made its Instant Press and Fuji made its FP-1 Fotorama. These Japanese cameras are expensive, provincial, and have a lot more in common with the 110A/B than they do with anything else.

Dying a most timely death

Let’s talk about the automatic pack cameras (250, 350, 450 and similarly-shaped autoexposure cameras). Many – most – Ebay sellers do not know how to test these. They buy them at garage sales, listen to see if they click, and then label them as “refurbished” or “converted.” These estate-sale pickers are fairly easily identified by their Ebay IDs or how they list the items (“I don’t know much about cameras, but this works…”). They may disclaim that they can test them at all due to “the film [or batteries] not being made anymore” (both of these claims are actually untrue). Stay away from these people. You may be paying a lot in shipping to receive a non-functional camera, paying for one or more packs of film and a battery to unsuccessfully test it, and then paying a bit to send it back. If you are really serious about these cameras, you might want to pay a bit more to get one from a reputable source (like Option8 on Ebay, otherwise found at http://www.polaroidconversions.com).

Let’s take the causes of death in turn.

First, the autoexposure system in every one of these cameras is based on a CdS cell that can go bad over a few decades, letting through too much current in low light. This causes a capacitor to fill prematurely – leading to underexposed pictures. This was a common enough problem that the Polaroid service manuals of the era specifically called that out as a failure part – when the cameras were only a decade old. Imagine what they are like at 40. There is no replacing these cells today, and the failure of a CdS cell is not usually a constant adjustment between dark and light scenes (this is compounded by the fact that the film itself has a non-linear response to light that is driven by the shortness of the exposure). The problem is not unique to Polaroid; CdS cells in other things fail too: Nikon TTL finders for the F and F2, Gossen Luna-Pros, and pretty much anything from before the early 1980s. Some type of recalibration is necessary – sometimes this can be done via adjustment of the L-D dial on the camera; sometimes it needs more.

Second, compounding the problem is that the cameras were originally designed for mercury cells (anything that is a PX-anything was originally mercury). Mercury cells have a relatively constant voltage that stays flat until the batteries die. But they did not run at the 3v of the last Polaroid-supplied cells – and certainly do not run at the 3.3v of lithium CR123As (a common conversion). Every little bit of voltage helps create even more underexposure. If you’ve used alkaline batteries (like 625As) in an SLR designed for mercury 625s, you know exactly what will happen. And again, this is not a linear error: it will hit you hardest in low light, precisely where your ability to judge exposure is the least.

Finally, things age. Battery leakage with mercury or carbon-zinc batteries can be a real mess, but alkaline cleans up with white vinegar. Bellows fail (not as badly as leather). Lenses get fungus (very infrequently, thankfully, because Polaroid made pretty much every “leather” part of the cameras out of synthetics that do not absorb the moisture that feeds fungus. And that caustic Polaroid paste can rust out the roller assembly frames.

Rehabilitation

If you have one of these cameras and want to learn how to make it behave, I have a 12-step program. Auto pack cameras have two major redeeming features that manuals do not: very fast top shutter speeds and infinitely variable exposure. Fixing the exposure is the one you might want to zero in on.

1. Stop worrying about the development timer. The electronic development timer on old pack cameras does not go long enough to reliably time Fuji FP-100C. The former times to 2 minutes; the film really requires 3 – and has about 4 hours of dry-down time in which the picture will darken by what might look like 1/2 a stop of exposure. Sufficient development is the cornerstone of evaluating everything else.

2. Get some modern batteries in there – and stick with them. For the 3V cameras, you can either get snap-end alkalines, put in a AAA holder, or convert to lithium. The latter options can be executed by anyone with basic soldering skills. Whatever you choose, you need to commit to regular battery changes before the voltage drops significantly. Remember, these cameras used cells with very flat discharge curves and under instructions to replace the cells once annually.

3. Clean the rollers. The stainless steel rollers in the camera are often encrusted with the development paste. Though not as noxious as the paste actual Polaroid films used, the Fuji paste is still messy and still can corrode steel parts.

4. Press down the springs before loading. Polaroid packs had metal casings; Fuji has more flexible plastic. Old Fuji films had a flat back that was distorted by the springs in the camera, causing frames 1 and 2 (the “bonus” frames – Polaroid only gave you 8) to jam in the camera. The new Fuji packs have cutouts. With these, it should not be necessary to cut the springs out to prevent the black paper leader and the film from jamming.

5. Fan the white tabs. When you load the film, load the left end first, right end last. The white tabs hang outside the well that the film sits in. Gently fan them.

6. Before you completely close the back, pull the black cover on the film pack out about an inch. This will give you more leverage to remove this tab when the back is completely closed. You won’t accidentally expose the first frame – because that black paper wraps all the way around the film pack.

7. Take the shot. Remember, the “wide” aperture of the camera is f/8.8, which is very slow for a handheld camera. So hold your breath. And keep holding the shutter button until the cocking lever pops up. If you let go prematurely, the exposure will end too early.

8. Wait for the development. If you are shooting a relatively rapid sequence of pictures, don’t start timing until you shoot the last one. Then wait 3 minutes and open them in sequence (the exposure numbers are stamped on the back of each).

9. Don’t make snap judgments about exposure. As I mentioned in #1, wait a long time after peeling before changing the lighten-darken dial.

10. Use the lighten-darken dial. You have enough range to brighten by 2 stops (4x the exposure) and dim by 1 stop (1/2 the exposure). The big marks are one stop; the small marks are 1/2. In the old days, Polaroid had such consistency problems that every pack of film came with a base calibration (“one small mark to ‘lighten,'” for example). But with the high consistency of the Fuji film and the poor linearity of the metering you need to understand these settings.

11. Invest in flash if you need flash. These cameras (except for the 360) all have M-synch, which means that the camera will ignite the flashcube 20ms before the shutter fully opens. This is because a flashcube contains oxygen and magnesium foil and does not reach full brightness for a fraction of a second. Why Polaroid was so bent on using these is unclear; it may have had something to do with the reciprocity characteristics of the early pack film (a super-fast flash exposure might change the effective speed of the film).

Although the 400-series cameras use Hi-Power flash cubes, which are supposed to be X-synch, there is really nothing such as X-synch on these cameras as delivered (or on flash cubes…). There are people who have – anecdotally – tested these and concluded that they work with electronic flash, but observation through the back of the camera shows non-circular white images – indicating synching error. You can generally get away with using an older flash fired on full power (giving a long pulse that exceeds the “open” time of the shutter), but it does not fire with the power you would expect – and you will not always get full frame light coverage.

The good news is that converting these cameras to perfect X-synch requires bending a copper contact (as well as some quality time with a modern electronic flash repeatedly checking the shape of the flash through the lens). People of moderate mechanical ability can handle this. If you want to use cubes, get a 450, which has a sophisticated, distance-corrected flashbulb flash. This louver-operated correction (shared with the 360’s electronic flash) is not fooled by subject reflectivity and comes out looking good most of the time.

12. Understand the film’s latitude and color. Fuji FP-100C has almost no tolerance for underexposure, and it has a very cold color balance (at least in my testing). This makes it possible to take reasonably well-balanced pictures in room light or daylight. Be careful about pictures taken in shadow. An 81A gel can help (increase exposure by a little under one small mark). Attach a circular piece of the gel to the inside of a Polaroid 585 UV filter for easier handling. In any situation, err on the side of mild overexposure. Note also that the blue cast sometimes diminishes during drydown.

Fixing exposure!

Ok, so I got to 12 steps before the big secret. You can generally figure out how to make these cameras work. I had a 360 that was massively underexposing. Here is how I figured out how to fix it.

1. Collect materials to make a filter pack. Get a roll of Scotch tape, a ND 0.3 gel filter (hint: Roscolux swatch books have a 50% transmission grey), a pair of scissors, and several boxes of (color) film. Make sure the camera has batteries in it – the kind of batteries you intend to use long-term.

2. Set the L-D dial to the center point. Shoot an average daylight scene (>= EV 10). Develop. Wait. It will likely be dark. Stick one layer of gel filter over the CdS cell (not the lens!). Take a shot. Develop. Wait. If it is still too dark, add another layer and repeat the other steps. On my camera, for example, I figured out that the “normal” exposure was approximately 2 stops off. So ultimately, I used 2 layers of ND filter. You can also use 75% transmission filters if you really want to fine-tune (but it does not seem necessary).

3. Then go to low light (< EV10). Shoot a picture with your filter pack. You will probably find that your pictures are too dark – and blue. No surprise here – slow shutter speeds and low light cause sensitivity loss (reciprocity error) and color shifts in FP-100C film (it’s documented, but it’s a bit worse than Fuji’s graph’s suggest). Dial the L-D dial to +1 and try it again. As long as you can do it within the +2 range the camera gives you, you are fine. You will need to add an 81-series filter to warm things up, though.

Note that FP-3000B (black-and-white) seems to have less of a problem with reciprocity error (and obviously has no color issues) – so once you “zero” the camera outdoors, you should be good to go for most conditions. Be careful with this film – it has little tolerance for overexposure.

4. Why are we doing it this way? Since time immemorial, Polaroid pack cameras have been designed for bright sunlight or flash (hence the f/8.8 maximum aperture). Color film has the best color when shot at a speed of 1/60 or higher. Although these cameras can shoot long exposures (up to 10 seconds), the film won’t – at least not without major correction. That’s also a reason why you want to use the maximum aperture even outdoors with color film. The f/17 aperture at the “bright sun” setting for 75-speed (FP-100C) means that except on the brightest days, your shutter speed will drift into the danger zone for exposure/color shifts and camera shake. Shooting indoors with ambient light, you are really exceeding the camera’s design intent – and so you should be ready to compensate the exposure.

5. Note that any such calibration is only good for the particular camera and type of batteries it is running on.

6. If you suffer from chronic overexposure, you can use a similar process but tape the gel to the back of the lens (inside the camera). Calibration procedures are essentially similar.

7. Now you can get on taking Polaroid pictures of heavily-tattooed blonde women (or is that singular?). Only this time, the effects will be under your own control and not be at the mercy of a decrepit camera. After all, your desire to do the heavy lifting is why you don’t use Instagram, right?

Flash with the 360?

The Polaroid 360 is an odd bird – it has a rechargeable flash that charges for an hour and then (hopefully) shoots 20-30 pictures. The 360 flash interfaces to the camera via a four-pin connector that gives a ready light on the camera and overrides the shutter operation. It also interfaces with a moving lever in the flash shoe that tells the flash the distance at which the camera is focused.

The flash always fires at full power, and moving white louvers cut the output light as appropriate to close distances. The louvers move moderately between 3 and 10 feet and are fully open at 10 feet and beyond (the actual usable range of these flashes is generally about 3-6 feet). The L-D control on the flash gives a lot more control – closing the louvers almost completely at the darkest setting – and between it and the main control on the camera, you can shoot balanced fill shots.

The problems with this flash, though, mirror those of the automatic pack cameras. The NiCd batteries in the flash go bad over time, and even when rebuilt, once the battery is depleted, that means no more flash shots for at least an hour. Because every exposure is at full power, and because the unit has a dump circuit that completely empties the capacitors when you take the flash off the camera, battery life is pretty dismal. If you go for a flash converted to modern, removable batteries, make sure it takes AAs or lithium-ion cells. AAAs do not have the grunt required to charge the capacitors in this flash.

Capacitors also go bad over time – and this can reduce flash power. You might really need to crank up the LD control on the flash.

If you are outdoors, it does not hurt with 100-speed film to turn the camera’s L-D control to +2. This helps keep the ambient exposure in line (otherwise, it could be very short).

The Miniportrait 203: The Next Big (or Little) Thing?

I’m very surprised that no one has yet caught on that the cheapest manual Polaroid camera is the 203 Miniportrait. This camera, originally designed to take passport pictures, has two 125mm lenses, can shoot two of the same or two different pictures on the same sheet of film, has a built-in flash (you pick the aperture on the camera based on focused distance), manual shutter speeds of 60 and 125* and manual apertures of f/8 to f/32. It also has an x terminal that lets you attack with a Metz 45 flash. The internal deisgn of the camera is interesting; it uses two servo-actuated counter-rotating disks to fire one or both shutters.

*Note that there is a “version 2” of the 203 with a blue face that does not have a shutter speed control or 1-2 indicator for which frame is being taken. It does, however, have solenoid-activated shutters and the ability to rapidly fire each shutter in succession, facilitating multiple exposures. Later cameras such as the 209 followed in the tradition of 203.2, immediately eliminating the distance rangefinder and progressively eliminating manual functions.

The catch, of course, is that the 203 (like its big brother, the 403) is only designed to shoot at about 1m. The camera has a sonar rangefinder to tell you when you are within the minimum DOF at f/8. Like a more hip version of the Big Shot, it’s for taking head-and-shoulders shots. The model 78 supplemental lenses (essentially -1 diopters) take the focusing distance to about 2m. Since the lenses are stackable, I suspect that you could get close to infinity focus by using two or more.

These cameras have generally had hard lives and are designed for tripod use, but if you are physically fit and have some creativity, they are a lot cheaper than shelling out $600 for a 180 plus $120 for close-up lenses.

Brilliant!

The quick and dirty on Polaroid rangefinders

[2012-08-12] You knew it was only a matter of time before something appeared here about Polaroid rangefinder cameras. You just didn’t know it would be today. The following is a summary of the Polaroid cameras that are actually worth buying. [2018 note: not many]

The Rollfilm Remnant

110A (“Pathfinder”) – The 110A is a folding metal camera with coupled rangefinder (dual windows). It commonly features a 127mm f/4.5 Rodenstock Ysarex (Rodenstock recomputer Tessar, complete with Lanthanum glass) in a B and 1-1/300 Prontor mechanical shutter. Many of these lenses (which cover 4×5) have found their way onto Century Graphics and Speed Graphics. The Ysarex is a pretty sharp little lens (and I do mean little). While you might grouse that it only goes to 1/300 sec, realize that your “1/500” on a leaf shutter is really only 1/350.

You can’t use a 110A as-is, because Polaroid stopped making film in the early 1990s. People routinely convert this camera modern pack film, 4×5 readyloads and regular holders, and even 120. The conversion is easily double the cost of the camera, is usually invasive (as in cutting off the left side of the camera) and is labor intensive. But when it is finished — it’s incredible. It’s more solid than any Polaroid camera which followed.

The fun with the 110A is using it to make giant 3.25×4.25 inch instant negs on 665 print/negative film. The negatives clear in cold water (you should stil fix them) and make perfect Polaroid-size contact prints, can be scanned, or can be projection printed. Film speed is 100 for the print; 50 for the negative. You get one or the other.

The 110A has some quirks that don’t always come across on Ebay. First, the shutter release is a bar on the front of the camera that is accessible when you are using the second quirk, which is the front-door mounted focusing knob. The third quirk is the fact that you need a tropod adapter to tripod the camera in the vertical position (the socket is on the door, right next to the focusing knob).

Note that a 110A cannot be used with a standard Metz 45-series flash due to the bottom tripod socket positioning. The camera has a flash shoe that can handle flashes with the ring-lock type of locking (just slide the flash in backward). You then have to connect to the shutter terminal on the lens. The Prontor shutter has both M synch and X synch.

110B (“Pathfinder”) – the 1960 model 110B has two changes from the 110A. The first is that the rangefinder and viewfinder are combined, with field-corrected framelines that shrink as you get closer. RF image is a yellow trapezoid (clever) on a bluish field. This is a lot faster in operation than the 110A’s dual windows. The 110B also features a pinhole lens cap which provides you with an f/90 setting to use with 3000-speed film. My personal suspicion is that the finder was made under license from Konica, which had just invented this type of finder with the Konica IIIA and the Pearl IV.

Pack Animals

Pack film cameras: There are tons of pack film Polaroids from about 1967 on. Most are garbage. Some traps you will run into buying these cameras at thrift shops, on Ebay, and at garage sales:

• Plastic lenses – some of the pack cameras have plastic lenses. You can usually tell because they are dull and do not have the colored sheen of the coated f/8.8 triplets found on the better Polaroid pack cameras.
• Corroded battery chambers – these cameras came out in an era when carbon-zinc batteries were the norm. For those of you born in the alkaline era, carbon-zinc batteries often use acid, which means that battery gunk doesn’t just clean out with a Q-tip and white vinegar.
• Bent front standards – some people simply did not know how to close these things.
• Broken battery wires – unless you are good at soldering, walk away.
• Electronic print timers – These are activated by a microswitch which is on the back door. These often fail because a wire that goes between the sensor and the timer fails. These timers also require their own batteries. If you time your own development, you only need one battery – the one that operates the shutter.
• Rollers – make sure that the rollers are not scratched or rusted. You can clean the rollers with a paper towel and water. If you really get in a bind, you can buy a jumker and salvage its rollers. Rollers should be cleaned every time you change films.
• Batteries – false trap. These are available; they are 3V alkalines with snaps on the top and bottom. They cost about $9 at Radio Shack (#960-0378), and I believe that Polaroid once again stocks them. Some people convert to CR123A lithiums or AA batteries, but that is a lot of trouble when one of these suckers will go for about 20 years… you often find the cameras with some juice left in the original batteries.  Alkaline corrosion can be removed with a Q-tip and some household vinegar. But some batteries, even if their nominal voltage is correct, provide too much voltage to provide accurate exposure.

In general, the higher-end Polaroid pack cameras are well-designed and tough. The bellows are nearly indestructible, and the body is very solid. The plastic clamshell front cover swings up, the viewfinder/rangefinder swings down, and everything is protected.

Skip any camera that does not have one of the two numbers below. These things are so dirt cheap (and the film is so expensive by comparison), you might as well go straight for the gusto. Maybe look at a 250 if you are on a budget (no electronic print timer). Shutters go to 1/1200 sec.

Model 360 Electronic Flash – This is the only 60-70s Polaroid pack camera with normal X-synch (other than the really expensive 180/185/195s described below). Repeat, the only pack camera with X-synch. Glad we got that out of the way. The 360 is really the top-of-the line pack camera, with aluminum body, Zeiss-Ikon combined viewfinder/rangefinder, tripod socket, electronic print timer, and most importantly, automatic flash. Lens is a 114mm f/8.8 coated triplet.

The flash on the Model 360 is a dedicated unit that slides into a hot shoe(!) on the upper left side of the body (looking from the front). This unit almost never works, because the batteries are cashed. But there is a way out. The flash uses AA Nicads with tabs, that must be soldered in place. You can buy these batteries for about $10 apiece and just solder them in. Coolest of all, the flash has louvers which move to and from to compensate for focused distance – so it’s flashmatic! The flash circuitry occupies the place where the batteries normally go, so the battery compartment is on the front.

The combined Zeiss-Ikon combined viewfinder is definitely better than the plastic one that preceded it. It is big, has a nice RF spot and features shrinking projected framelines. That said, don’t work yourself up into a caniption about the fact that it is Zeiss-Ikon, because by the time they made this camera, ZI was on its way out of business. So you’re buying a name, not an exponent of the Zeiss empire.

Model 450 Automatic – this was also technically top-of-the-line, but it does not have electronic flash; it has its own baby flashbulb unit, the “Focused flash” (with louvers that adjust power depending on distance, like the electronic one on the 360). The flash was included with the 450; it was optional with the 350. Otherwise, they are the same.

“But wait”, you protest, “it has an X-synch socket that my Vivitar 283 [automatic] flash plugs into.”

Don’t go down that path.  Polaroid designed these cameras around bulb flash, with a type of plug that has two parts – an electrical connection and a small t-shaped connection that tells the camera’s exposure sensor to shorten the ambient (i.e., non-flash) exposure.  Modern PC cords lack the second part – so you risk blurry backgrounds if you plug a normal PC-type flash in.

I have observed that there is also something off about the flash synch itself when you plug an electronic flash into the socket on the camera – you get underpowered flash, unless you shoot on full power or two auto settings more powerful than you should need (such as setting the flash to f/4 auto mode when the lens is at f/8.8).  This tells me that the flash is firing when the shutter is not all the way open – leading to the conclusion that these cameras are M-synch – meaning that absent some heroics, you are going to lose a lot of flash power.

For your reference, the actual lens f/stops are (for the 360 and 350/450):

Film Speed	75	150	300	3000
Dull Day / Flash`	f/8.8	f/12.5	f/17.5
Indoors	—	—	—	f/8.8
Bright Sun Only	f/17.5	f/25	f/35	—
Outdoors/Flash	—	—	—	f/50 f/60 on 360

Of course, since these film speeds by and large don’t exist anymore (except for 3000 black and white), you need to use the Light/Darken dial to compensate. One small notch is 1/2 stop (so you should be able to go from 75 to 100; 75 to 50; or 300 to 400).

Model 180 / 185 / 195 – These cameras are like the regular pack cameras, except that they have various lenses (like Tominons) in mechanical shutters. This means no AE (though the 185 has a match-needle meter – but you’ll never own one of these, so don’t worry about it). These cameras were aimed at professionals who wanted a proofing tool but could not get a proofing back for their main cameras. These cameras are very expensive (but still less expensive than a converted 110B), and not as solid as a converted rollfilm camera. These are good, but they are really the product of grafting a professional-grade lens onto an amateur architecture. The 180 and 185 have the combined Zeiss viewfinders (the 185 has a coupled light meter as well); the 195 has separate windows for viewfinder and rangefinder.