A Few Polaroids with the Wife! (Patreon)

Hey everyone, this is a very special post for me, the first reason being of course because I did a mini shoot with my wife, which is rare and the second is because I shot some Polaroid for the first time! Also a third reason, I finally got myself a Polaroid camera, or should I say cameras, I'll explain why in a few seconds if you care to stay and read more below.

On the Instax post with Anaïs I told you guys I had ordered a Polaroid from Ebay, a never used black Polaroid One Step+. Unfortunately the camera never made it, it was considered undeliverable for some reason I don't know, it's stuck at a Global Shipping Center in Erlanger, Kentucky. At least I got fully refunded, but what's sad is that the kind seller will not get her item returned, so stupid. Reasons why package was undeliverable could be because the package had a box of film included, then again I ordered film in the past from all over the globe and never had any issues. Then I though about the situation with the convoy we have here in Canada, at one point they were blocking express ways between the US and Canada, so there is a chance when they saw the Canadian address over there in Kentucky they just said fuck it.

I was bummed out because I really wanted this camera, I got a decent price and it was the black version, which is rare, anyway I explained why I wanted this now discontinued version. many consider it one of the best modern polaroids, also that the Now+ version has exposure issues. Then I started browsing Marketplace, I told myself I could use an older Polaroid and get it for cheap. So I found this Polaroid One600 not too far from my house and seller asked only 10$ for it, so of course I went and picked it up.

These were introduced in 2003, and were apparently the last version of Polaroid instant cameras made before the original company closed its doors.

In the meantime, I ordered some Polaroid 600 film, and was waiting impatiently to get it. Low and behold, I found a white Polaroid OneStep+ on Marketplace as well, only for 100$, the black version on Ebay would have ended up costing me around 180CAD. I would have preferred the black version, but at this price I had to get it, so here we are.

Alright now, so Friday I received the film, felt like Xmas, I decided to load the One600 first for some reason, then shot my very first Polaroid of my youngest son, results; blank! So now I was pissed. why is this blank? Light was good, right next to window light, plus the flash popped, could be the pack, the first photo, maybe because these older cameras have no frog tongue, but as soon as the photo came out I put it down upside down like they recommend. So what do I do now? Do I risk another shot? Well with the steep prices of Polaroid film I didn't, I decided to go to the good old dark closet and switch packs from this camera to the OneStep+. I heard from a Youtube video this was possible and you could take that black slide and put it back on top because the camera will always spit out the first frame so I would not waste another shot. The transfer worked, however the camera spit out the black slide and the next photo as well, so now it's 2 frames wasted. 

This moment was the moment of truth, decided to take a quick shot of my dog, nothing fancy, and I would leave the flash on, just to be sure, and success it worked!

Like I said, no banger shot here, but I was just happy it worked. However, I'm still not 100% sure there is a problem with the One600, could still be a problem with the first shot in the pack, but at the same time a hunch tells me the camera might have a problem with exposure since the photo was just completely unexposed black. Anyhow, I only paid 10$ for it, I don't care if it works or not and I don't intent to further more investigate the problem and loose more polaroids (and $$$) since I have a camera that works anyway.

So now I was eager to shoot more Polaroids, I asked the wife if she wanted to do a mini-shoot with me on that night, you know after the kids went to bed. I know she is self conscious about her body, it's not easy for us, being old and stuff, but she agreed to do this for the art! 

The Barbie bags series was well received, well here anyway, on Instagram it holds the record for the lowest like count and reach ever, but I digress. A Patreon told me that it might be a cool idea to try the bags with real models, so I did, well I tried, it wasn't easy. So here is the very first shot:

Neewer led panel on the right and red wand light in the back, probably what created the round red lens flare which I like, I think it adds to the photo. It was very hard to place that bag properly, it was creating highlights on the wrong places all the time, plus the pointy tips of he bag were just weird and funny. Meanwhile my wife was suffocating in there lol, the bag was getting steamy, and no we forgot to punch hole through it lol. 

The Polaroid One Step+ can be connected through bluetooth and the application gives you access to very cool features, such as Remote, Self Timer, Double Exposure, Light Painting and Manual Mode which I used for this shoot.

It was quite handy, I was at 1sec exposure (on tripod of course) f/12, with no flash.

Exposure is quite accurate, needle in the middle at 0 gave me that first exposure. I like this photo, for the first one I was kinda impressed. 

Now for the second shot, I wanted something moody, quite mysterious, I ended up taking this:

Overall I like it, should have composed a little more to the right so that I don't frame the light wand there on the left. But damn, you gotta love those Polaroid colors, so authentic and artistic. Looking back I should have done a side by side shot with the Instax to show how shitty it would have turned out, like I said before, I hate Instax, such a dull film stock. 

We are going to skip the third shot because it looks like shit and my wife would be pissed if I decided to share it. For the 4th one, she was laying there on the bed and I decided to take the shot so she could rest at the same time.

Patreon is probably the one and only place where you can see my wife partially nude, don't say that I'm not a giving person now :) 

Here I had the led panel with warm light to the right and she was holding the wand light in her head with red light, you can see it right at the bottom which I tough I wasn't framing. One thing I can say is that there isn't much parallax problems with this camera compared to the Instax SQ6, which is a very very good thing.

For the 4th and last shot I brought back the plastic bag, she got in there again but this time on her back. I tried to put the tripod with it's 90 degrees angle, but I wasn't high enough, it was way to close to her face. It was getting late, so I said fuck it, let's try this bad boy handheld at 1 sec exposure lol. 

On the steady side I wasn't so bad, however I was a little under exposed. I should have added a fill light on the left, you can barely see anything here. That was the last shot of the pack, as I said it was getting late so that was a wrap.

Shooting instant film is so fun, so different than anything else, even slower than shooting film rolls, you really have to concentrate on each shot, at the price they go for I wouldn't go crazy with this. One thing though, I found it was super long for the photo to actually appear, I would say it takes a good 25-30 mins before the photo develops entirely, it's a slow process if you want to test out light and stuff. If I remember correctly the old school Polaroids took 2-3 minutes to develop, which it's why they called it instant photography. Anyway it's super fun to see the results and it is well worth the wait.

Wow, that was a much longer blog post than I expected, I don't expect too many to read this till the end, but if you did I thank you for reading and don't hesitate if you have any questions or comments. Cheers !