burnt embers

I continue to try to get the Polaroid Land 100 camera working properly (see earlier posts here and here). There have been very few moments of good light the last few weeks, so I have barely used it. This photo was taken in Victoria’s Chinese Cemetery. I underexposed it by about 1 stop as the white marker in the foreground was my subject – that part worked OK, though probably a bit less than a full stop would have been better.

I framed the shot through the viewfinder so that all the headstone was in the shot, and cut the image off at the top of the fence. Or at least I thought I did – the guideline in the finder dips below the top of the bellows unit so I thought I should use that as the coverage and estimated from there. Looks like I should use the top of the bellows unit/lens board as the bottom of the frame, or even a bit higher. Clearly an adjustment to the viewfinder is needed and I have found instructions on-line in the form of an old service manual, but doing it properly does not look completely straightforward. First I will take some more photos and see if I can estimate well enough to not need to bother with an adjustment.

Where the streaks comes from I am not sure. This was the last shot in the pack. When I first got the camera I opened it on the film, not noticing there was some in the camera. So, it is possible that it got a bit of a zap of light at that time, though I doubt that is the cause of this pattern. I don’t know how long the film was in the camera, but the other pack that came with it expired just a few months ago and it is likely this film did too, so probably it is not age related degradation. Maybe it was the way it rolled out of the camera – not pulled fast enough, or pulled too fast, or something. I have cleaned the inside of the camera, including the rollers that were a bit gummy and loaded a new pack, so it is ready for more experiments.

There does seem more to making pictures with this camera than I had expected.

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Polaroid Land Camera 100 Automatic, Fuji FP-100C, minus ca 1 E.V.

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