The Polaroid 320 Land Camera
Fujifilm's FP-100c
Fujifilm's FP-3000b
I recently picked up an old Polaroid 320 land camera, and for a camera that's over 40 years old it's in fantastic condition. The reason I got the camera in the first place was to play with the old 'peel-apart' instant film. Polaroid as a company had a turbulent history and in the wake of the modern 'instant' digital images Polaroid filed for bankruptcy late in 2008. As a result the original Polaroid film is nye-on impossible to source but companies like Fuji and 'The Impossible Project' make a select number of very good replacement films. A quick search online proves its pretty easy to pick some up (new and expired film), the two main film packs I purchased for my 320 were the 'Fuji FP-100C' (colour film rated at 75 ASA/ISO) and a black and white version 'Fuji FP-3000B' (black and white film rated at 3000ASA/ISO) which I've yet to try.
If you're looking to purchase an old Polaroid instant camera then it's worth doing a bit of research, I unfortunately made a couple of less than successful purchases with the older land cameras finding out that the ones I bought didn't take the film made by any other company or that they had updated the film carrier during one model line meaning that newer versions of the camera didn't take the current film. Very frustrating.
Electrical tape, a pair of scissors and two AAA batteries is all this mod needs
Classic 40 year old Duracell 3V PX24 battery
Tape the two AAA batteries together then tape the white wires connector to the positive and the black wires connector to the negative
Finally though I picked up the 320 and that took the modern film perfectly.......but I wasn't up and running smoothly just yet. For a piece of technology this old you'd expect it to have more fundamental differences compared with modern cameras than it actually does, but it's essentially a light capturing device and that basic principle hasn't moved on hugely nor is it likely too. The one main thing that always changes though is how we power our technology and back then although it was still batteries they were quite different and it's not a simple case of popping to the shops to pick up some new ones. It took a 3V PX24 (never heard of it? Me neither), and although we can't strictly replace it like-for-like we can match it with a similar amount of power. The modern AAA batteries are 1.5V each so by taping two of these together and then taping the connectors on top we now have a fully powered vintage Polaroid camera. Now that I have power running to my camera I'm ready to shoot in ambient light. The camera has a remarkable (at the time) 'electric eye' which once the shutter is open, senses when the film has received enough light then closes the shutter again (the main reason for the batteries).
The Polaroids flash mount reveals a Post connection
If all I wanted to do was shoot landscapes then I'd be all set but I really wanted to use it in a studio environment with strobes. To do this I would really need to sync the camera to my strobes, this actually turned out to be far easier than I expected because to my surprise when I removed the onboard flash mount underneath was the same flash sync PC (Post Connection) receiver that we still use today. Like I mentioned before some things in the camera world just haven't moved on ('if it isn't broken, don't fix it'). This means that I can quickly and easily just plug my strobe light directly into the camera and I'm ready to shoot. When shooting with strobes you are probably going to want to light meter your scene to avoid costly trial and error shots. My Polaroid 320 has an aperture of f8.8 so with the 100 ISO film its pretty easy to achieve crispy exposed shots (bear in mind that the 'electric eye' still seems to work so keeping your ambient light down will help to eliminate blurring.
The first result using the FP-100c film synced to the strobes.
Model: Charlotte Norris
Useful links:
Current official Polaroid website Polaroid.com
Fujifilm's ISO 100 FP-100C film
Fujifilm's ISO 3000 FB-3000B film
Other modern replacement Polaroid film packs by The Impossible Project
The shockingly designed Land List tells you everything you could possibly want to know about old Polaroid cameras, its just almost impossible to find what you're after.
Here's a useful link to a page that tells you what aperture your Polaroid land camera has: polamad.com