Vintage Photo Weekend

While I was typing up this post my sister uploaded her post about the pinhole cameras. Here are my pinhole shots. Unfortunately our chemicals started acting up just when I got a really good shot.

Now, I am a big fat cheater so I used the computer to reverse the images so here are my negative shots as photos.

For those of you that don't know (and why would you really?) my sister and I bought two late 1960's model Polaroid cameras from Goodwill for a couple of bucks each. We didn't know if the cameras would work, but they sure looked cool. Now, my sis had the great idea of getting together and having an all out photography weekend. She wanted to make some pinhole cameras (I will let her tell you more about those) and I wanted to see if the Polaroids would work.

So I tells her, I say, "Sis. Since you want to do the pinhole cameras and I want to get the Polaroids working how abouts you get that stuff and I will get the Polaroid stuff and we will work on both when we get together." And then she says " Awesome! Lets get together pretty quick and get our photo on." (I may be paraphrasing)

So we did.

Good news, the Polaroids do work. I bought some uber-expensive batteries (inflation from 1969 I guess) and the three types of pack film that I read were compatible with the cameras. If you have some old land cameras and you want some film that works then try Fuji film 100B, 100C, and/or 3000B. There is a big difference in the films. The 100 films are great for outdoor photos with lots of light. The 3000, not so much. It's better for indoors and low light photos.

These are the first two photos we took. They were taken with the Polaroid 320 camera and 100B film. At the time we didn't realize the 100 film wouldn't be great for indoor shots. We were just so dang happy that they worked.

Next we loaded up the Polaroid 250 with the 3000B film. It worked much better inside as you can tell by the cactus lamp shot and the shot of my sis.

The next morning we went downtown to check out a small camera shop. My sis has quite the eye for a good photo opportunity. She spotted the old building across the street from the camera shop. I took this photo with the same camera as the first two shots. As you can see, the 100 film works much better outside. The next photo op she spotted was the water pump. It's a historical marker, but I don't know what for. The railroad shot was my first attempt. My sis has the much better second shot. I let her have it because I am super generous and it was her idea and she has wanted to take a picture of the railroad by my house for ages.

We wanted pictures of ourselves using all our various cameras so here is my sis with the Polaroid 250 and my last shot with the Polaroid 320 camera with 100B film.

After the black and white film was empty we loaded the 250 with the only color film we had, the 100C. Unfortunately, I forgot to adjust the settings so it was still trying to shoot 3000 speed film even though it was loaded with 100 speed film. Hence the dark first photo. The second photo of my hubby wouldn't have been great, but the sun had set and there wasn't enough light.

Now that we know everything works we will definitely be doing this again.