New SX-70 Land Camera
June 15th, 2010 - 16:42I’ve just received possibly one of the most exciting birthday gifts ever. Adele has hit the jackpot and spoiled me rotten with a beautiful 1974 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera, complete with leather case, original box and instruction book, and original-boxed accessories including tripod mount and close-up lens.
The way the camera opens up, and then closes neatly back into an oversized zippo-esque oblong of brown leather and brushed chrome, together with the satisfying clunk of the reflex mirror and the reasurring mechanical whir of the motors as it ejects the resultant print make it a joy to use and an object of fascination. They certainly don’t make things quite like this anymore.
Unfortunately, the supply of available film is a little limited. Since Polaroid went to the wall a few years ago, supplies of film became scarce. It was only when a group of artists and ex-Polaroid employees stepped in to save the world’s only Polaroid instant film manufacturing plant from the receivers’ hammers that a future of any kind was preserved for the medium. The Impossible Project, as it became known, aims to reproduce the old film and allow the format to continue on.
These shots are taken using The Impossible Project’s PX100 Silver Shade film. It’s an unpredictable old Hector, highly sensitive to light, even for a few minutes after exposure, and with evolving colours and saturation, depending on temperature and storage conditions of the print… It’s nice to experiment with, but unfortunately at £2.50 a shot it’s going to cost me…
Each pack holds 8 shots. Here’s the first. More results to follow.
