Introduction

This is the 3rd of my posts of Polaroid Photos. You can find the first here and the second here.

These were all taken with my trusty Polaroid 250 Land Camera using expired Fujifilm FP-3000B stock. I have copied the information from my original post about the camera at the bottom of the post for those who might want to know more about it.

Feel free to use these in your own posts if you want as per Steemit4free. To save you having to go back through the old posts I have copied the old images into the bottom of this post too for you to use.

Processing and Repair

As noted in my previous posts these images were all very damaged and each one took many hours of restoration work - hence why it has taken so long to get these out.

It is always a risk using expired film and in this case some turned out really well in spite of the flaws. I would not advise anyone to buy this film anymore unless you have a lot of money and time to do the restoration. Each different canister seems to have a different look and slightly different characteristics.

At the time the expired stocks (which were in good condition) were selling between £10 and £20 and each canister of 10 was giving me roughly 2 useable photos (out of 10). Good (properly stored) batches are now selling for double that price and the failure rate will only be worse.

These were repaired in Photoshop with some mild tweaking of exposure in Lightroom. There is a tutorial which covers how to do these sort of corrections here. It is actually quite easy even though it can take a long time - particularly if you have very large scans.

The Photos

1

2 3 - This one was taken with the blinds closed and is probably my favourite. The slight underexposure gives a horror film feel to it much like the "Darkness" shot which I included at the end.

4

5

6

The Old Photos

7

8

9

10

11

12

13 14 - I called this one "Darkness" and it was another experiment with underexposure.

15 - This is the inverted negative of the above shot . The negatives when inverted have less contrast than the actual photos. Sometimes they look better. The problem is that they tend to get even more easily damaged as they are on quite flimsy paper.

About the Polaroid Automatic 250 Land Camera (taken from my original post here)

I first became familiar with this camera on the recommendation of one of my favourite photographers, Emily Soto. She showed me how to use it at one of her workshops 3 years ago and I immediately fell in love with it. Sadly soon after buying it (I think only a week or two) Fuji announced that they were discontinuing the main FP-3000B film (see image below) that I use.

Although there are other film types that may still be available via the Impossible Project that are compatible with this camera they don't have the same characteristics as the 3000B. Most importantly the 3000B has very high contrast and extremely high light sensitivity.

Also the Impossible Project film is very expensive. Prices of old Fuji stock have gone up quite significantly and thats if you can find it or get it to work. I think out of my final 5 canisters only about 20% of the photos were usable and most of them had defects due to deteriorating film.

It is sad because this is a fantastic camera and a great way for those of us who are only really familiar with digital photography to try using film in a very safe and easy to use manner (no chemistry degree required).

The camera itself is from the 1960s and I purchased it from the Film Photography Project website. They refurbish all their old cameras and provide a guarantee with them. It is quite advanced for the time with it's special Zeiss Optics and Viewfinder as well as an advanced (for the time) auto exposure system. The refubished cameras have been modified to take a regular battery (the original had a custom one that was impossible to find after being discontinued).

Here you can see the folded camera body with the now discontinued high contrast 3000 ISO film - unfortunately this is my last canister so I couldn't show what the inside canister looks like without ruining it.

The 250 when open. The little pocket holds the original manual and film cooling metal plate.

The front of the camera is on bellows that need to be pulled out.

The focusing system is quite weird an uses a rangefinder type system where you must manually line up 2 images. I can't show it here but you can probably read more about it online. It is quite tricky to use.

This shows the simplicity of the camera and also the back plate where the film canister is loaded.

The funky 1960s manual is in surprisingly good condition.

I love 1960s stuff. Could these images be from any other time?

You can see more of my work @thecryptofiend - hope you enjoy.

(Verification for me here: http://www.aapicture.com/about-me)

Polaroid 250 Land Camera with Fuji FP300B Film. Model is Rachelle Summers.

Photo Credits: All photos are my own unless otherwise stated and free for you to use under the terms of Steemit4free.

(Verification for me here: http://www.aapicture.com/about-me)

Some of my other recent photography posts

Are You New to Steemit and Finding it Confusing?

These resources may help:

For a Quick FAQ - Try this
To learn about Markdown (to help you post) - Try this
Need to know Steemit Etiquette? - Try this
Need some free images for your posts? Try Steemit4free - make sure to check which images it applies to.
Need to talk to a human for help? - Try the chat
Need Mentorship? - Try Steemprentice - here is a link that explains it, and here is the chat channel.
Need a Free Image Host that works with Steemit? - Try SteemImg - it automatically produces markdown and html links for you, as well creating thumbnails and more.
Need to Buy or Sell Steem/SD? - Try this tutorial for Blocktrades.

(Want to use this list in your own posts? - download the text file formatted in Markdown here.)

More Polaroid Photos of Rachelle (Part 3) - free photos for you to use in your own posts