First Test

To try out my new camera I bought a pack of Polaroid 1200 instant film from Ebay.

It is a colour film that doesn't suffer the same foibles as the new film from The Impossible Project. But it expired in October 2008.

So there was no guarantee it would even work.

When I loaded the cartridge, I heard a click and whir as the camera sprang into life and ejected the darkslide.

As the battery is contained within the film cartridge I didn't know if I had a working camera until that point.

After hearing the whir I knew I had what appeared to be a working camera, but I had a heavy cold and the weather outside was dreadful.

Regardless of the weather outside and how I felt, I needed to pop out to the shop to get bread and milk, so used the opportunity to get a quick shot of a tree top through the freezing fog.

Genuine Polaroid film may not be as susceptible to light and temperature as the new Impossible films, but it still doesn't like to develop in the cold. So I grabbed a quick shot round the corner from my house, then came straight back into the warmth.

All I could see was the top of a tree through the freezing fog. But this was just a test to see if the camera worked rather than trying to get an amazing shot.

What did I learn from this test?

For a start, my camera does actually work! This was an old expired colour film, but due to the nature of the test photograph I couldn't tell how much colour I'm actually getting.

I also realised I'm seeing more in the viewfinder than is appearing in the print. With this test I could see the top of all the branches in the viewfinder, but it looks like these are going into the white border at the top of the print. I'm going to need to consider this when composing future shots.

Comments

[mariana]

- Polaroid land we love you!Caroline: take photos so I can share on the blog. xo.Neal: thank you muchoVanessa: I want to go back w you and have some warm wetaher Paris.Tracee: Love myself some instant gratification.Melanie: Can I just be in Australia already? I am going to shoot so many polaroids at your wedding I'll probably break my camera.April 30, 2010 2:19 pm