This is my uncle’s studio! He started it after Polaroid killed the 20x24 program, but there was still a strong demand for the format. It is a unique camera, shame that it’s lifespan is basically over at this point.
These incredibly innovative industrial processes of the mid-20th Century never cease to amaze me!
I was lucky enough to sneak through the fence and explore the abandoned Polaroid plant in Waltham along 128 before it was torn down. So many miles of metal piping, so many valves, so many Giant Red Buttons!
Based on the current price of the revived Polaroid film from the Impossible Project, you'd be looking at around US$70/shot for this. If you could get new film for it.
Photography (especially on this scale) used to demand a lot of forethought and commitment. While do I enjoy taking pictures without having a meter running, I sometimes wonder what's been lost along the way.
Agreed. It's wrong to think though that the way that digital photos are taken would imply very large costs for film. From experience, you take shots in a different way, and are forced to be more contemplative with large format, and it's basically impossible to shoot more film than you've got with you in film holders!
I'd typically head out with my 5*4 with 4 holders, so that's 8 sheets of film. There might be a mix of ISO 100 and 400, and it might be that I am not in a situation that suites one of the films, so i'm suddenly down to a max of 4 images.
On a related note, I've been a fan of Dr. Land since reading an article about him in Popular Science in the 70's.
Still hoping to find a decent SX-70 for a reasonable price some day.
We could never afford one but I used to go to the local camera stores and scavenge the empty film cartridges from their trash. They would demo the camera, and of course throw out the cartridge. But it still had a perfectly good battery in it.
