And then there is my penchant for film cameras. While I'm sure Kodak, Fuji, and Ilford are glad to have my film related business, I'd imagine the folks at Canon, Nikon, Sony, or Olympus might be disappointed that I'm not quite the gear head who must upgrade to the newest models of their hardware each year.
And yet, even within my odd niche, I can be well behind the curve as well. In this case, it has led me to barely grab hold of the irons as the last train is leaving the station, and joining in the final passage of a journey that many in my hobby reflect upon with nostalgic sorrow, but for which I've been more or less blissfully unaware until just recently.
The story begins as I'm perusing some Craigslist ads only to stumble across one particularly interesting listing selling off a collection of various cameras and lenses. The lot includes some new pickups from familiar makers like Nikon and Pentax, a few classic roll film models, and a pair of extras tossed in from a name familiar to nearly anyone who has even seen a physical photo taken in the last 50 years: Polaroid.
Ask the average non-camera collecting person about what Carl Zeiss, Voightlander, or Leica means to them and you are likely to be met with a blank stare, but chances are that same person should have a pretty decent idea about what a Polaroid entails, From its decades of innovation as a leader in the field of instant photography, the term "Polaroid" has largely come be synonymous with its genre.
At the same time, the term Polaroid has largely become synonymous with the term "Hipster," One need only review the lyrics to Demi Lovato's "Really Don't Care" to get the vibe of recent sentiment towards the caricature of those who partake in instant photography. Things certainly have changed in the decade plus where Outkast once popularized the phrase to "Shake it like a Polaroid."
So when this one camera fell into my lap with this single Craigslist transaction, I was excited, dismayed, and confused all at the same time. You see, while I can not only find meaning to the names Carl Zeiss, Voightlander, and Leica, I also have a decent grasp of the history of these camera makers to have a basic idea of their product lines through the ages. Not so for Polaroid.
And to think that at one point, I was an enthusiastic user of one of their products: Polapan film, a really wonderful 35mm black and white slide film from the 80's and 90's that was "instantly" processed in a small crank-spun home processing unit to yield some lovely monochrome transparencies. My enthusiasm for this product never once spilled over to me wanting to adopt any of Polaroid's "bread and butter" products in the field of instant print photography. Even getting back into the field of film photography beginning in 2014, I never once considered instant photography and what may have become of it.
The result was that the field of instant photography was one confusingly grey area for me Even if I'd stumble across an internet thread of news snippet on the field of instant photography, I never knew the breadth of what such news entailed. One such snippet of news involved the discontinuance of Fuji Peel Apart Instant film FP-100C, and was met with significant dismay from the film photographic community. As I'd never used such film, I had no idea of what the relevance of its discontinuance entailed.
Reading the articles about its discontinuance, and seeing its packaging as a Fuji "professional" product, my first thought was that it was used in medium and large format cameras with special "Polaroid" backs. or for older ID cameras, but not in any product that was in my typical sub-$20 price range. Though I could feel empathy towards other film photographers losing a product, I'd never thought it would be a product that I'd have purchased.
But here I was picking up a Craigslist lot, consisting of a pair of Polaroid cameras: the "Big Swinger" and this camera: The Colorpack II.
Looking something like an oversized Instamatic, the Colorpack II is a sizable camera rife with the feel of the late 1960's and early 1970's. The "kickstand" used for posing this camera is actually a diffuser for flash bulbs.
While the rather awkwardly named "Big Swinger" did not use a currently available film, the Colorpack II uses the FP-100C that I'd presumed was simply a "professional" product. Once I discovered this, I began to look forward to using the Polaroid more than the other cameras that were far more within my comfort zone. And with this realization, my interest in cameras using this endangered film began to grow. But more on that later.
