Polaroid 600SE

Soad’s parents recently moved overseas and thus the “Great Pack of 2010″ ensued.  Which meant the cleaning out of old stuff, basically it was a nostalgic treasure hunt.  Taking a trip down memory lane remembering why you didn’t throw that thing out all those years ago, refusing to throw it out again, and then promising yourself you’ll definitely use it this time.  To get to the point, during this treasure hunt my father in-law found his old Poloroid 600SE, which is a fully manual instant camera he had back in the 80′s while he was living in Africa.  If you really want to nerd it up about the camera I direct your attention here: http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Polaroid_600/600_SE,  I’ve put a photo of it at the bottom of this post.  Due to the shear beastiness of this camera, my father in-law offered it to me.  Talk about generous! I am still pretty stoked, who would of thought?  So I sourced some expired B+W Polaroid film from ebay (100ISO, my first mistake, should have gone 3200ISO to keep up those shutter speeds)

So, this isn’t exactly the easiest camera to take photos with. Not to mention the rangefinder focusing mechanism isn’t working, and I bought film you’re supposed to use when it’s quite sunny.  I have also discovered how hard it is to take a photo on a fully manual camera without any kind of light meter.  Have I mentioned the focus doesn’t work? The only way to focus is to guess how far away your subject is and hope for the best.  Anyway enough diddly-daddling, here are the scans of my first few shots.  I think what I like most about these pictures is that they’ve taught me a lesson in humility.  As far as technique goes, these shots score pretty low.  Let’s just call it artistic vision and move along, hehe.  Sir Manual Camera Polaroid 600SE, you may have won the battle… and the war… and I don’t really have an exit strategy.  So I’m just gonna keep on shooting anyway.

Yeah, that’s right… Square compostion, waddup?

Take cares, brown bears

Ps. I also recently acquired another film camera, this one is from the 70′s.  Pictures will be coming to a cinema near you, and by cinema I mean blog post.

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~ by jonfen on December 9, 2010.