Polaroid Passion

 I love Polaroids, I have about 6 different Polaroid cameras one of them is the 250 Land Camera. I picked it up on ebay for about £15 and it has been my favourite Polaroid camera even beating my beautiful, folding SX-70.

When I go it in the post I opened it up and it smelled of an other age, it was pretty dirty but there were no holes in the bellows, the rollers worked and all the switches functioned. I bought some B&W 1000 iso film and went out to experiment with my new found treasure. If you have used a Polaroid most of them have limited focusing capabilities, it's simply a point and shoot camera but the 250 is a rangefinder which allows yow a bit of play with depth of field and can give beautiful image that can appear half documentation and half memory. Now before you go off on a rant I know you can download countless filters and frames to make your iphone pics look like Polaroids from the 1970's with light leak and uneven emulsion, but in my experience there is nothing like the real thing. The ritual of framing, shooting and then ripping the frame from the camera and of course then there is the waiting… In a previous post about Polaroids I touched on this, but with the 250 Land Camera it's even more special as you have to peel the negative and the print apart an then there is the reveal, when you discover the real beauty of the camera.

If your tempted then The Impossible Project have a limited edition kit just in time for Christmas, but it's priced at 500E!! If you don't have that kind of cash, originals can still be found in a less loved state on ebay (other auction websites are available).

  

All Polaroid images here © Patti Smith

Another fan of the 250 is Patti Smith, in fact it was after seeing some of her photographs that I searched out my camera. Here are a few images of hers to give you a feel of the image quality and atmosphere that can be obtained.