What is it about instant photography? Sure, there’s the instant gratification of having your image straightaway, but you get that with digital too. Is it the fact that it is a print rather than just an image on the screen, something physical and somehow more real? Maybe, all I really know for sure is that I love it.
Here are a few results from my recent instant photography fun. All are shot with either my Polaroid 340 Land Camera or my Fuji Instax 100, shooting Fuji FP100C and Instax Wide respectively. Any spots, scratches and the like on the images are the result of a tired, old scanner and not the cameras themselves.
The Polaroid 340 Land Camera is older than me, they only made them between 1969 and 1971 according to one website I have seen, but fully functional. Not sure I can say the same about me. It was a real bargain – my Mum found it in her loft and gave it to me for free. There’s one picture of me as a baby taken with a Polaroid in one of her family photo albums and I suspect this was the last image taken with it until I got hold of it. Amazingly, the original battery in it was still working!
The Instax 100 was, at the time of its release, described as one of the ugliest cameras ever made. Strangely Fujifilm seem to have been happy with this and have tried to make subsequent Instax Wide cameras even uglier! However, I don’t care how it looks – only about the pictures it takes, which are great!
I need to spend more time using these two cameras, I can’t help but smile every time I do. Now, if only I could find a place to get the film packs cheap . . .
Floating Down The Maran . . . 