Or maybe that I’d strike up a conversation with a kindly, old janitor. That they’d see the Polaroid camera in my hand and shout, “A Polaroid? You’ve come home!” That they’d bring me to a hidden storage vault wherein is kept the last 24 karat gold Polaroid SX70, new in box, a donation to my humble website.

I knew intellectually that nothing like that would happen. But I admit that I was taken aback when, as I drifted my way through Polaroid’s former headquarters upon the east side of the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a few days ago, nothing happened at all.

No pictures on the walls. No memorial cabinets. No statues or monuments or relics under glass. Not even a brass plaque declaring “Here, from 1979 to 1996, the great Polaroid Corporation of Cambridge Massachusetts did repeatedly revolutionize the instant film industry and bring countless happy smiles to millions of camera likers the world over!”

I guess I should’ve known. My first hint of a disappointing result came earlier in the day when I had run into an old friend who happened, many years ago, to work for Polaroid.

“Oh, that reminds me. I’m going to go visit the old Polaroid headquarters. See what’s there.” I said brightly.

He paused for a moment, frowned slightly, and replied with a single word. “Why?”

I reluctantly admit to understanding his confusion. Though Polaroid’s founder, Dr. Land, held science and engineering in the utmost esteem and was always happy to say that Polaroid lived “between Harvard and MIT,” the original Polaroid company’s presence in Cambridge is long gone. Even before their (first) bankruptcy in 2001, Polaroid had moved much of their operation to towns far from the city center, or, even worse for the local workers who built the company, overseas. The Polaroid of today has no true relation to the Polaroid of the Cambridge years.

Still, remnants of the old Polaroid have lingered here and there.

I used to drive past a building every few days, and above its loading dock was pinned a sign, POLAROID LOADING DOCK. That building was demolished last year. A restaurant on Mass Ave displays a framed photo of Land sitting crookedly at one end of the bar. The MIT Museum holds an extensive collection of Polaroid archives, documents, and more. And of course, Edwin Land Boulevard has not yet been renamed.

I expected that if any place in Cambridge would have a fair amount of interesting Polaroid relics still kicking around, it would be the gorgeous building that they once called headquarters. And as fate would have it, I’d just been sent the Polaroid I-2, the new Polaroid company’s newest film camera. I needed sample shots for my review. A walk down the Charles River couldn’t hurt that need, and if the old Polaroid HQ happened to offer a few interesting shots or a trip to a secret underground Polaroid history warehouse, all the better.

But the past has a way of disappearing.

As I approached the squat, beautiful building, I framed a few photos and pressed the shutter release of the newest Polaroid camera. Out came the frame, which I tucked neatly into my pocket without looking.

The pale, white bricks of Polaroid’s former throne are interspersed with glass block and tightly framed windows, giving the building a rich texture, striking lines, and dramatic shadows in the autumn sun. A central tower rises amidst two slightly lower wings, and from out this tower projects a prominent, geometric cylinder of windows. Above this is an analog clock (installed during Polaroid’s ownership), and above this clock is a blank space which once boasted a massive, black-lettered POLAROID sign (gone, now).

The building today is tenanted and operational as an office, so I was respectful and a bit hesitant to enter, but a sign on the front door happily directed visitors to the back entrance, whereupon entering I found a lobby empty of any and all human presence, and a lonely reception desk. I spoke “Hello?” into the air five or six times, received no reply, and twirled in place underwhelmed. I sat in the comfortable lobby and waited, but no one appeared.

A set of stairs rose up on one side of the lobby, so up I went, announcing myself on every landing, optimistically seeking someone, anyone, who might be happy to chat about the building’s earlier tenants. I paused on each story to look out through that cylindrical array of windows. With each story I was gifted a better view of the flowing Charles River, the crisp golden leaves hanging in the trees, the brilliant blue sky, all lovely, persistent elements which Polaroid employees and executives and chemists and engineers must once have looked upon (and photographed?) from these very spots.

I hesitated through the halls of the building.

“Hello?” I called into the hushed places. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

But nobody answered, and I saw no one. I took a few pictures with the new Polaroid camera. It whirred loudly in the quiet, and I was hopeful that someone might come to see just what was making this strange noise, that I might announce myself and apologize for the intrusion, but to ask if anyone knew or cared about the building’s illustrious past. But no one came. No one was there. I felt odd and out of place. I touched nothing, drifted through, continuously speaking “Hello?” to nobody.

I climbed the last of the stairs to find a small utility space at the building’s highest level. Packed densely into this place, which was essentially an open-air closet for those who maintain the building, I saw a ladder, an access hatch, toolboxes, some mechanical panels that looked important. There were spare office chairs and shelving and desks and lamps being stored under a thin film of dust, the static necessities of a working building.

It’s here that I found the only sign that Polaroid had ever existed. An actual sign. A simple rectangle of thin plastic, likely survived from the days when Polaroid owned the place. It wasn’t even affixed to the wall, nor to a signpost or a hook. It simply sat on the floor, propped without care or ceremony against the baseboard of the wall.

“EXTERIOR POLAROID CLOCK MOTOR.”

A sign for the person who maintains the clock.

Fair enough. Time goes on. It must, and it does. In more ways than one.

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But to ignore these things is impossible, for they are simply too perfect to ignore.

I visited Perkins Cove last month with my family; my wife and our two little girls, aged six and eight. I brought a Polaroid Spirit 600 (which is an instant film camera from 1982), and two packs of brand new Polaroid film.

I’ve written in the past about my struggles with the modern version of Polaroid’s instant film, and the cameras which shoot it.

The images we get are unpredictable, too often of poor quality, and always expensive. Each photo made with Polaroid film costs about $2.50. Classic Polaroid cameras are mostly primitive and very basic, offering virtually no user control, no focusing aids, and no chance to tweak or adjust our image before or after the picture has been made. If we’re lucky, we have a rudimentary exposure control, but that’s it.

Newer Polaroid cameras are better in some ways and worse in others. The Polaroid Now, the brand’s current consumer-level camera, is a great product. It’s reliable and nicely made, but it costs more and has less charm than the retro cameras. Polaroid’s newest camera, the Polaroid I-2, is the first camera made by Polaroid in decades which features truly respectable user controls in the form of multiple shooting modes, aperture and shutter control, auto-focus, et cetera. It promises high quality instant photography for real photographers, but it costs $600.

The truth is that with Polaroid instant photography, it’s tough to have it all. But despite the cost, the inconvenience, and the frustration, I always come back to Polaroid film. I simply love it.

There’s no replicating the grinding gears of a vintage Polaroid camera ejecting its fresh exposed photograph, no duplicating the feel of a chunky camera from the 1980s, the creaky plastic and the hopeful experience of peering through a tiny acrylic viewfinder at the most important thing in the world, and praying that the stupid old camera in our hands happens to capture that importance on film.

Most of the time, it doesn’t. Sometimes, it does.

My daughter, Siena, is my little shadow. She follows me everywhere, a barnacle on my hip. She wants nothing more than to spend time with me, to share her thoughts and ask me mine, to share her favorite things with me and adopt my favorites as her own.

My daughter, Sophie, is an utter joy. For the first four years of her life, she was shy and quiet, but at some point which neither my wife nor I can exactly recall, this changed. She works now to hone her comedic timing, often bringing herself to the point of hysterical cackling at whatever joke or character she’s created in her mind, while the rest of us watch and smile and wonder, What’s going on in that head of hers?

My wife is my best friend. We’ve been together through the worst times of our lives, and more importantly (and thankfully far more frequently), the best times. And though life is stressful and busy and brutal (occasionally), when we’re together it feels as if everything is just as it should be.

In his fiction and essays, Kurt Vonnegut often reminded his readers to notice when we’re happy, to stop for a moment to think or to say, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” I paused at the crest of the Perkins Cove footbridge which connects the peninsula to the mainland, raised the Polaroid to my eye and snapped a photo of my wife and kids. Sophie smiled into the lens. The sun beamed down and glimmered off the water. The Polaroid squeezed its image through the rollers with a happy squeal and I stopped to think. “If this isn’t nice…”

It was mid-October and the temperature had dropped so that the trees that rim the cove had begun to close off the veins which carry fluid and minerals into and out of their leaves. The supply of chlorophyll in each leaf had been used up, some slowly and some quickly, and the green had gone with it so that the leaves had lit aflame in orange and yellow-green, some others shouting out a burst of bright red. Those which had fallen had done so by the thousands, creating a roiling carpet of earthy fire upon which our four pairs of boots softly crunched.

The boats were tied to their moorings in the harbor and the dinghies to their docks. The icy waters lapped against their sides in the rhythmic whisper so familiar to any place which sits aside the sea. We watched the boats float and sway and imagined the cold of the ocean if we were to board one and pull the anchor and sail forward through the granite mouth of the cove and out into the grey black waves of the Gulf of Maine just a hundred or two-hundred yards ahead. No thanks, we said to the gulls who cried for us to join them, instead pointing our toes to the local lobster and burger shack, Barnacle Billy’s.

There’s a cliff walk there called Marginal Way, which begins (or ends) in Perkins Cove and ends (or begins) in the town center of Ogunquit. The name “Oqunquit” aptly means “beautiful place by the sea” in the language of the indigenous Abenaki tribes, who were displaced in the 1620s and on as English settlers moved into Perkins Cove and the surrounding area to establish sawmills and fishing ports and shipbuilding industries. The 1.25 mile hiking path skates the treacherous high cliffs of the coast of Maine. In places, the grade is steep and the wind buffeting, but it’s a mostly-paved path with iron fencing to keep the clumsiest of our party from tumbling away into eternity.

My feet were numb by the halfway mark and I was ready for a fresh pile of french fries at Barnacle Billy’s, but we carried on, pausing briefly to clamber down the slopes to one of the plentiful beaches to select from its multitude of wave-rounded rocks one or two each as a free memento. Later we came across a lighthouse so small that I didn’t even think to take a photo. My daughters hugged it, as they tend to do to any lighthouse within arms’ reach, and then we moved along to give the lighthouse and time to enjoy it to the next group of trekkers. We reached the edge of Ogunquit proper just as the shadows grew longer than the light, turned around, and began the walk back to Perkins Cove.

The sun was gone. The air was chilled. The shops were closed or closing. And we clung to the happiness of family. We warmed ourselves as best we could in the few places still open, a gallery of blown glass trinkets, the aromatic chocolate heat of the candy shop, a few moments of play with borrowed toys from the shelves of the smallest toy store in the world. And then we surrendered to reality and the road home. We bent our creaking skeletons to lower ourselves into the seats of the car. I fired the engine, and glanced as often as the winding ring road would allow in one final loop of the cove.

I had spent the day taking pictures of the people I love with a silly camera on expensive film. As I shot and the camera ejected each frame with its customarily chunky raucousness, I had tucked each chemical square into the pocket of my jacket just over my heart. I didn’t really look at the photos. I didn’t care about their quality. I didn’t examine the shots as they developed, nor remember them during the long drive home down I-95. Not until many days later did I see what I’d made.

And there they were. The pictures. Not perfect, some not even any good. But perfect pictures, nonetheless, of my kids, my wife, and Perkins Cove, a place where we lived together for just a day in a cold Autumn in 2023.

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But in a press conference in 2010, mayor Menino mumbled his plan to revitalize the area. New transportation infrastructure was added (the Silver Line of the MBTA would provide public transport) and the scenic Boston Harborwalk was extended to run along the north side of the Seaport. 1,000 acres of the waterfront was redeveloped as an “Innovation District,” a regional hub for burgeoning industries such as clean tech, bio-chem, and health care IT.

It worked. In 2014, the area was described as “the hottest, fastest-growing real estate market in the country.” By 2017, the Seaport District boasted 78 restaurants, 8 hotels, and more than 1,100 housing units.

Yesterday, I revisited the Seaport, this time with my wife and kids. The transformation was stunning.

Everything was new. The streets weren’t just clean, but freshly paved with geometrically pleasing block work like I’d not seen since I visited Tokyo. Sleek, glass towers rose into fluffy clouds where abandoned cranes once listed against an overcast sky. The sounds of summer were carried along on a sweet breeze. Young sun worshipers lifted their faces under an azure sky. Live music carried with it the scent of outdoor dining. Families loving life and each other. We even saw (I kid you not) a marriage proposal. Moments after the heartwarming clapping trickled away, a Lamborghini’s motor roared through the canyons of glittering mirrors.

“Holy shit.” I said the swear quietly, so the kids wouldn’t hear. “This place has changed.”

My wife had never visited the Seaport during its squalid era. She asked what I meant. I explained, prefacing with the caveat that I’m kind of an idiot and don’t know much about anything.

“I remember this place being a total dump.” I said. “The last time I was here I watched a cop get mugged by six rats in a trench coat. The air smelled like dead fish and a bucket of nails. Now look at it.” I pointed to the three Lexuses parked alongside a perfectly manicured public garden, upon the lawn of which lounged a few dozen smartly-dressed young people drinking bubbly liquid out of crystal flutes. Everyone was smiling and gorgeous, with taut skin and perfect teeth. “Nothing but yuppie scum!”

She logged her disapproval of my prejudice against yuppie scum with a sideways glance. For the record, I don’t truly dislike anyone, not even yuppie scum. While I freely admit that conspicuously wealthy people irk me, I don’t really mean to pick on them. I just find immense pleasure in the phrase yuppie scum.

We walked on, stopping momentarily at the foot of a residential tower, all glass and Mithril silver like something from Tolkien’s elves. In the windows of the foyer floated framed monitors displaying listings for the apartments within, their amenities and pricing. $1.2 million, $2.6 million, $4.0 million. I gawped at the listing for one particularly luxurious rental unit and its price, a staggering $17,000 per month.

Per month!

After some time, I closed my mouth, blinked, turned to my family, and said the only words that came to mind. “Anyone want ice cream?”

At least my camera looked the part. Or it might have in 2002. Because I was using the Contax TVS Digital, a luxurious, expensive, stylish point-and-shoot digital camera capable of recording images at a stunning resolution of five point two megapixels.

We published an article last year about the growing popularity of Digicams, digital point-and-shoot cameras from the late ’90s and early ’00s. About a year later, The New York Times copied us and published a similar (though worse) article. It’s always nice to see a small publication find their voice.

I reviewed the Contax TVS Digital even before that, way back in 2019, and even then I predicted that we’d see a massive surge in the popularity of early digital point-and-shoots. Hey, maybe I do know something after all?

And so, today’s literary stroll will not be a camera review. I won’t list the specs, nor compare the titanium shelled Contax TVS Digital to its contemporary models. And readers searching for the history of Contax and the details of the Kyocera years will need to look elsewhere. I won’t even allow myself a sentence about the Contax T series‘ proclivity toward sapphire shutter release buttons, though it kills me to hold back.

I won’t mention how thrilled I was to discover that the Contax TVS Digital has an in-camera black-and-white shooting mode, nor how amazing it is at creating surprisingly striking images with deep shadows and well-retained highlights. I won’t compare it to Fujifilm’s film simulation modes. I won’t bring up the frustrations of the camera’s incredibly slow startup, nor its interminable read/write times as it saves and displays shot photos.

No, I won’t talk about the camera. Even though I want to, because I love its sing-song warble when I turn it on, I love the Game Boy quality sound effects that squeal from its insides when it locks focus and the delightfully fake shutter release sound it makes when I press the shutter release button, which – did you know? – is a synthetic sapphire?

I’ll hold back my gushing and simply share the photos, and bring you along as my beautiful wife and my lovely children enjoyed a stroll through Boston’s North End, down toward the waterfront, over the bridge, and into the new, revitalized seaport, where we wove through and amongst the filthy rich and the young and the beautiful, and where we stood in line for half an hour for the privilege of buying Japanese ice cream served in a warm, fish-shaped waffle, and where we held hands along the pristine harbor front walkways, and where we poked into a store that sells cupcakes made exclusively for dogs.

If that’s not gentrification, I don’t know what is.

But I do know that days like yesterday are why I love cameras and photography. I went to a place to see new things. I saw them, and I shot them with a neat camera. I shared the day with my family, made a few decent photos. In a perfect world we should all be so lucky.

[The gallery in this article contains images from the Seaport, as well as shots from Boston’s North End and other places where we spent our day, all made with the Contax TVS Digital in its black-and-white photo mode.]

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​The Camera and Lenses

Alright gear heads, I hope you’re ready; there’s a bit to go through before we reach the central theme of this piece. I’ll start first with the camera.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t remember a Toyo Super Graphic, only the Graflex Super Graphic.” You wouldn’t be shamed by many people. Toyo purchased the manufacturing rights of the Super Graphic from Singer/Graflex in the early 1970s, with the earliest Toyo versions being produced in late 1973 and early ’74.

The camera body itself is just about the same as its older Graflex brother. They even share most of the same features; a revolving back, electronic shutter release for handheld use, rangefinders with interchangeable cams, and front standard swing. There is also what is called a flash computer, but from what I’ve been able to gather, it amounts to a calculator that resides at the top of the body to aid in flash metering.

Both the Graflex and the Toyo require an odd ball 22.5 volt battery for the electronic shutter release. I didn’t use it because I’m not enough of a mad man to use this camera handheld.

What lenses did I pair with this unstoppable force? I was extremely lucky to purchase this camera with three magnificent lenses, all three of which saw use over this last week.

First, the nifty fifty and the widest focal length of the three, a Nikkor-W 150mm f/5.6. For the uninitiated, calculating the 35mm equivalent of a 4×5 lens is quite easy, simply divide the focal length of the 4×5 lens by 3, and that is your 35mm focal length equivalent. This method is used to determine if you’re using a wider angle or more telephoto lens. Since the first lens in the trio is 150mm, divide that by three, and you get 50mm, which is arguably the most standard focal length in the 35mm format.

Next in the lineup is another Nikkor-W lens, the 210mm f/5.6. The optical formula of both of these large Nikkors is comprised of six elements in four groups. A simple, yet effective formula that we have seen in Nikon’s 35mm glass. Aperture diaphragms on both are comprised of seven blades. Both lenses stop all the way down to a minuscule f/64, a favorite of large format pioneers Ansel Adams and Group f/64.

The 150mm lens takes 52mm filters which is also the same size as my 35mm lens filters. This is an incredible upside since I won’t have to worry about investing in a set of filters for at least one of my 4×5 lenses.

Finally, to round out the lineup is a Fujinon T 300mm f/8. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find much information about this lens. The few various forums that I read that even make mention of this lens just write it off as decent. Which is kind of a shame because the portraits I made with this lens were incredibly sharp stopped down, soft at the edges wide open, and even made for a great lens for architecture and detail work. Once again, longer focal length lenses not getting the love and credit they deserve; where have I heard this before?

Film

The next item on the list, what film did I use? Well, since pack film has rode off into the sunset, Polaroid is not doing Polaroid things (deciding instead to create Bluetooth speakers), and wet plate collodion is chemistry class with a camera, I used the next best thing we have available – a Lomo Graflok Instax Wide back and Fuji Instax Wide film.

This might be blasphemous to the die hard instant shooters, but Instax Wide on 4×5 is near pack film quality. Before I’m banished from all instant film circles, let me plead my case.

Instax Wide doesn’t usually come to mind when discussing the greatest of the instant films. You usually hear mentions of the various Fuji FP series. Polaroid made its name with SX70, 669, and the multitude of consumer film for which it was world famous. Not to mention, the large format peel apart, namely 4×5 and 8×10. Ansel Adams, as well as many professional photographers loved this instant tool as a means of checking lighting, composition, and a print as well as a negative to use as a reference or a print on its own. Instax Wide has the ability to take the place of those once beloved instant greats.

Lomography graced us large format nerds with the Lomo Graflok Instax Wide back to use on cameras with what’s called a “Graflok” back, otherwise known as a camera with a Graflex style film back. Since my new Toyo is a Japanese Graflex, this makes it perfect for this use.

My experience with Instax Wide on 4×5 has been nothing short of refreshing and humbling. It reminded me that large format is nothing to rush and that a simple mistake can cost an exposure. Since Instax is readily available and significantly cheaper than sheet film, I had no qualms with making a mistake on Instax. After all, it’s all apart of the process.

The quality of Instax Wide is wonderful. The color film brings vibrancy, pastel if over-exposed just a touch, and the process of watching the image slowly come to life makes even the most casual of instant film shooters smile ear to ear.

Instax Wide is very capable at 800 iso which means you can shoot in broad daylight at f/32 or in low light, so long as you meter for your highlights or shadows. Unfortunately, latitude is not this instant film’s middle name. You need to meter for shadows and let the highlights be eradicated or meter for the highlights and let the shadows fall into Mariana’s Trench. There’s hardly an in between. You can do what I did and play around with over or under exposing by a third or two since the apertures on large format lenses are de-clicked which allows for more precise control of exposure.

In case you were wondering about my metering process, I use a Pentax Spotmeter V. As simplistic as it may be, this meter does exactly what I need it to do and that’s about it. Most of these new meters are a bit too space age for my taste.

Polacon

Finally, the main event. I acquired my new 4×5 at peculiar time; one week before Polacon 7. For the non-instant shooters, Polacon is an annual convention that takes place in Denton, TX. It’s everything you think it is – photographers who are passionate about the instant film process gather for photo walks, print sales and trades, talks, presentations, comparing notes, lamenting about instant film’s recent discontinuations, and of course, all of the instant photographs.

To prepare, I borrowed the Lomo Graflok back from a good photographer friend (thanks Jen!) and quickly learned my process for using such a method of shooting.

This year would be my first attending Polacon, so what better way to do it than by attending a morning photo walk on day two of the convention? I showed up with my Super Graphic on the tripod and was quickly met with smiles and greetings. Everyone was welcoming, enthusiastic, and ready to get the instant photos underway.

All instant film types were present, Polaroid 600, SX70, I-type, Polaroid Go, Duochrome, Fuji pack film, and even 8×10 Polaroids! It was truly a sight to behold. However, there were some bittersweet undertones the more I talked to various people. Perspectives ranged from all over as the people I talked to were from various states, Minnesota, California, Florida, other parts of Texas, and so on. That’s right, this instant film convention attracts people from far and wide. Which is a beautiful thing, but the more and more I talked to these various people from different walks of life, they all had the same concerns – how much longer is instant film going to be around? Kind of a buzz kill at a convention celebrating instant photographs, but a valid question nonetheless.

One simply can’t put into words the passion everyone had not just about instant film, but the raw process of photography it involves. Instant film isn’t the sharpest, the latitude is not great, and sometimes, it down right looks kind of terrible if the exposure just isn’t absolutely perfect. None of that matters here. This was an interesting perspective and a refreshing one to embrace since I always second, third, and fourth guess about my compositions and exposures, especially on large format.

At one point or another, we’ve all experienced snobbery to some degree at a photo walk or meet up; usually a Leica with a persona attached to it. Those Lenny Kravitz Editions are especially guilty. No such snobbery was present at Polacon. Cameras of all shapes, brands, and colors were snapping and clicking away. Images printing out left and right, portraits being taken every couple of minutes. Never have I experienced such a joyous gathering.

The Future of Instant Photography

You may think that since there is a growing convention here in Texas, that should bode well for the future of instant photography. Well, this is where things become a bit pessimistic. Let’s recap how we got here starting with the formation of The Impossible Project.

Impossible Project was formed by ten former employees of Polaroid in October of 2008 who were able to save the last Polaroid production plant in the Netherlands. The goal of this team was to reinvent materials for old Polaroid cameras. A task that was deemed “seemingly impossible” hence the name of the project.

It was announced in March of 2010 that Impossible was successful in recreating a monochromatic film for certain cameras, a success no one saw coming. Just one year before, in 2009, Fuji announced a discontinuation of FP100B, FP400B, and FP500B with shipments concluding in March of that year. In September of 2011, FP3000B45, the 4×5 version of its famous high speed black and white peel apart film was discontinued with all 4×5 instant pack film being discontinued by 2013. On February 29, 2016, an infamous day to instant film shooters, Fuji announced the discontinuation of FP100C, officially putting the nail in the coffin for the beloved pack film.

That was a condensed version of a long, painful timeline of events, but here we are in 2022. Instant film is still around, Fuji pack film sells for absurd amounts on the internet with expiration dates varying wildly, averaging $150 for a pack of 10 instant photos.

Polaroid markets itself as a lifestyle brand, most recently releasing Polaroid Music, a Bluetooth speaker for which no one was jonesing.

Impossible reached out to Fuji about purchasing one of the machines used to keep the fabled pack film afloat and Fuji essentially told them to kick rocks. Those machines have since been repurposed (more likely sold for scrap) to make cosmetics, which is the primary source of profit for Fuji outside of its digital cameras and Instax film. From what most people have heard whether it be word of mouth or internet conjecture, Fuji is only making pro grade and consumer 35mm and 120 film in the 21st century out of tradition for the absolute die hard photographers.

Just a couple months ago, I acquired a pack of FP100C and FP3000B and put them through my Mamiya RB67 equipped with the Polaroid back. It was a fun, rewarding experience and a way to loosen up and keep the photo-creating process intact without having to burn film that needs to be handled in absolute darkness when developing.

I gave most of my instant pack film prints away, which for some is heresy, but I did that because it excited onlookers to watch me peel apart these two thin pieces of paper and see a vibrant image come to life right before their very eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I get as excited as the next person about peel apart film, but it’s an experience that the uninitiated will remember for a long time. They don’t know the heartbreak of the discontinuation.

I implore anyone reading this who has an abundance of pack film stored away in their freezer to do one simple thing: load that film into your holder and shoot it. You are not doing that film any good by keeping it in your freezer or fridge. It’s already gone. I’ve made my peace by giving away most of my 100C and 3000B prints. The smiles on those strangers faces are worth more than what that instant film could have brought me personally.

I wasn’t around during pack film’s heyday, I was fumbling around with a Sony A6000 at that point. I understand that many people have made memories with pack film and want to extend the supply for that much longer. The more you attempt to extend the supply, the longer you keep it in that arctic dungeon, the less likely that film will look like what you remember. Life is already short, just shoot your pack film and cherish the memories you make while doing so. When it’s all said and done, not only will you have the memories, but you will also have some priceless photographs. Is that not why we love instant photography?    

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This year, I decided to use my Mamiya 645 1000s to expose two extremely expired rolls of 120-format Kodak Kodacolor film that was generously gifted to me by a kind soul a few years ago. The roll of Kodacolor II expired in July of 1981, and the Kodacolor VR expired in July of 1986. I had no idea how these rolls had been stored, but I assumed that since they were shared by a fellow photography enthusiast, that they would at least have been kept in a temperature controlled environment.

I know there are a lot of opinions about how to properly expose expired color print film, and that not everyone agrees with the “rule” to add one stop per decade (of expiration), but that general guidance has always worked well for me.

However, since both rolls of Kodacolor were originally rated at ISO 100, using this exposure compensation method would have taken me to ISO 12, requiring me to shoot wide open with my manual focus Mamiya Sekor-C lenses. I might have had enough midday sun at the beach to handhold at these slower film speeds, had I not also insisted on shooting everything with a polarizing filter that cut an additional stop of light.

My workaround was to rate the film at ISO 25 and push it an additional stop in development. In retrospect, I should have gone with my gut and rated the film at ISO 12 while still pushing it an additional stop in post for an effective rating of ISO 6. Fortunately, I was able to salvage my slightly underexposed results by scanning the negatives in 48-bit mode and adjusting the levels in Adobe Lightroom.

I exposed both rolls under full sunlight in Nags Head, N.C., and was usually able to shoot at 1/125^th with my two faster lenses (the 45mm f/2.8 and the 80mm f/2.8). With my 105mm f/3.5, I had to shoot at 1/60^th and slower. In order to get sharp photos of beachside action, I primarily shot with the wider lenses stopped down as much as was feasible.

Kodacolor II was the first Kodak emulsion to use the C-41 process, and had only been available in 135 format for eight years by the time the roll I received expired. The shots on this older emulsion turned out rather nice, albeit with the quirks and degradations one would expect from a questionably stored four-decade-old roll of film. I actually liked the color shift toward cyan and magenta, which gave the beach scenes a dreamy, retro feel.

Even pushed, the film’s grain was pleasant and organic. The main drawback that I noticed was significantly reduced dynamic range. Highlights in particular tended to blow out when I metered for the midtones.

I was not as thrilled with the results from the Kodacolor VR, which was one of the early emulsions to utilize Kodak’s T-Grain technology. Mostly, I was disappointed with the look of the grain, which to my eye felt clinical (almost like digital noise) compared to the Kodacolor II.

The newer film also suffered contrast and color issues, but unlike the older film, the results felt more like a fault than a feature.

One fun quirk the Kodacolor VR demonstrated was burned-in ghost images from the film’s backing paper. This is a fairly common artifact found in other super-expired 120-format shots. Despite its understandable shortcomings, I was honestly impressed that the Kodacolor VR shots turned out at all.

Shooting expired film is always a gamble, especially when the film in question predates the photographer using it. That said, my experience with these two rolls of Kodacolor from the early 1980s was a winning bet. The fun, memorable scenes I was able to capture feel like snapshots from a bygone era, and rewarded my film experimentation with useful learning opportunities and enjoyable results.

Feel free to check out all the shots from my various OBX film sessions in my album on Lomography.

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Today’s Guest Post was submitted by…

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The post Antique Beach – Creating Summer Memories with Expired Kodacolor Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

But this was the California Zephyr. The biggest, baddest train of all Amtrak trains. I was on the second day of my four-day train trip from New York City to San Francisco.

I snuck a look at his shirt. It read, “I would rather be on a train right now.” Certainly on theme, but he was on a train. The logic confused me, but his expertise was crystal clear. This wasn’t a man of the seas. Not a man of the air. No, no, no. He was a fellow of the tracks.

“Where ya headed?” I asked with a big grin. Big because I needed him to see that I was smiling by my cheeks, considering the whole mask situation. I was on my third grey mask of the trip.

I truly didn’t care all too much where he was headed. I just cared about the distance. If he were an over-nighter, I would only have my single seat to spread across to sleep when night came. That’s how the last night went. I woke up somewhere in Delaware with a pain in the left side of my neck, so I leaned my head to the right and fell back asleep. I woke up a few hours later in Toledo with pain in the right side of my neck.

“Osceola,” he replied.

I didn’t know where that was. I stared out the window as I figured out how to ask tactfully. Maybe ask if he is heading home for the holidays. Get him talking, maybe another city will drop. Maybe give it a minute and angle toward the window, turn the brightness on the phone all the way down, and Google it. It’s rude to insinuate you want the person next to you gone so you could have some more legroom. On planes, that is understood. On trains, not so much. After all, I chose coach. I chose to be a broke college student riding in the cheap seats.

“How far is that?” I blurted out.

Well, game’s over. Off on the wrong foot. Guess he won’t offer to pick me up something from the snack cart when he goes. God forbid I have to ask to sneak out to use the bathroom. My seat might as well be a waterbed for the night.

Turns out, Osceola was five hours away. He was visiting his family back in Des Moines for the holidays. He had no clue how long he would stay; it depended on if the pandemic took his work remote. He worked in the donations and gifts department at Northwestern, where he had graduated a couple of years earlier. He went to study music, but the pandemic halted his hopes of performing full-time.

And then it was my time to shine. Be impressed with me, I demanded.

No, seriously. This is what I said: “I’m taking this train all the way until it ends in Emeryville, California. I started yesterday morning in New York City. Went down to D.C. and transferred onto another train to get to Chicago.”

That’s badass, I assured myself as the words trickled out.

The camera? Oh, glad you asked. I am a journalist. A student journalist. No, strike that. A freelance journalist. That’s the fit. And I was photographing America from the train window.

“Crossing the Mississippi River is always pretty. But I think it may be dark by then,” he said with a slight sadness as if to tell me to try again next time.

I wanted to turn to him and say that I couldn’t care less about what passed by that smudged window. When I booked this ticket in the spring, I had been holed away in my Yale dorm room in what seemed like a never-ending quarantine. Staring at four undecorated walls, grabbing my lunch in plastic containers, and logging into my computer to learn the history of Eastern Europe over Zoom.

And then one day, Amtrak slid into my email. Two hundred dollars to ride across the country. Live the good life. See the pretty mountains of Colorado, the deserts of Utah, and the corn of Indiana.

My student credit card had more than that amount. I was a 20-year-old in isolation about 1,000 miles from my home in rural Mississippi. And to fix that, to go from spending my free time hitting a golf ball down a plastic putting green by my door, to seeing the Colorado Rockies, I had only to take on more debt?

The trip started with a two-hour train ride from New Haven, Connecticut, where I attend college, to New York City, where the adventure would *officially* begin.

From New York City, I would take a train to Washington D.C. Then I would go from D.C. to Chicago, and from Chicago to San Francisco. All total, I would be on trains for four days.

With me, I had a backpack with necessities and a duffel bag’s worth of clothes for the winter break I would have after the journey. What were the necessities, you might ask?

One extra large jar of creamy peanut butter. A bag of pretzel crisps. Seven cliff bars. Well, six and a half… I ate one while waiting on the Uber to the train station. A journal, two books, a laptop, various chargers, adapters, and SD card readers. And a camera — a FujiFilm X-Pro 3 with a 23mm prime. The FujiFilm is my workhorse. Its small form factor and film simulations make it a joy to use. The Canonet? Always have to have a film camera, even though I never used it on the trip.

Stranded in West Virginia

“This is where I die, you know,” my seatmate nudged me as the train ground to an unexpected halt in wooded rural, West Virginia, at around midnight.

I gave him a quizzical look.

“I’m Black, and this is how horror movies start,” He told me, “and the Black guy always dies first in horror movies.”

It was the first words he had spoken to me since our rocky beginning. As I stepped on the train, the conductor gave me a seat assignment and said, “All by yourself,” which I thought meant I had the two seats in my row alone. I was wrong, if you travel with a partner, you can sit with them the whole time. Traveling solo? Random seatmates the whole way.

I was taking my time to get situated in my seat when he tapped me on the back and said “Hi. I am sitting here,” in one of those “please hurry up” voices. We hadn’t talked since.

But now, after my laughter had awoken nearly the whole car, we were best friends.

“Don’t tell my wife,” he told me a couple of minutes later as he reached into his bag.

Unsure of what to think, I just looked at him and gave one of those half-smiles, a worried agreement.

He pulled out two McDonald’s Filet-O-Fishes.

“She hates them,” He laughed.

I would learn a lot about this man. About how he was shot in New Jersey when someone broke into his home. About how it wasn’t so bad because he got some months off work to recover and spend with his daughter. How he laughingly purchased some “cheaper-than-usual” birthday gifts for her following the George Floyd protests in Chicago.

And about how he avoids planes. He likes to stay on the ground, just like John Madden.

“You get to really see America that way,” He said, “One day I’ll save up the money to buy a sleeper car and live the high life. That’s what I have always said. Maybe next year.”

HUMAN!

I woke up in Denver when he shoved me.

“HUMAN!” his shout reverberated across the whole car. He was my new seatmate, preparing to take the seat I had sprawled across to sleep for the night.

He was riding from Denver to Martinez, California, where his daughter lived.

“Always wanted to take my time on the trip for once,” he said. “Usually, it’s just thousands of feet above ground in a plane just looking at clouds. Don’t get nothing from that.”

He runs a gun store in Denver and was planning to stay in California through the beginning of the New Year. More practical information, important not only to my trip strategy but to the structure of this narrative, his commitment to the trip meant that he would be my seatmate for the next day and night.

If you need more room on a train trip, you can go to the observation car. It is a separate train car with seats facing the windows, and you can theoretically stay there for as long as you like. On the bottom floor of the observation car is the snack bar, which also has open booths.

When I went there, I saw another man who looked close to my age. And he was wearing a Harvard hat. I am not one to cave into these silly inter-college rivalries, but it makes for a great joke. I asked my social media followers, do I fight him? They overwhelmingly voted in favor, but, as I approached, he said hello. And turns out, he was quite nice!

As we were talking about college, graduation, moving on in life, and four-day train trips, a mom and her young daughter approached the snack booth just as the tracks got a bit bumpy.

“I’ll take a Hershey bar and a apple juice, pleaseeeeeeeee. The good stuff. Woah, this train is making me wobblyyyyyyy,” the young girl said.

The observation car and the snack booth brought the people of the journey together, from a school teacher playing cards with a retired Marine to a woman and her elderly mother sharing breakfast on the trip they had always wanted to take together before death.

And as the sun fell, leaving a coat of darkness over the desert canvas, I heard the words, “I love you,” and the man kissed his girlfriend and held her close, blurring their separate reflections in the window into one apparition among the tumbleweeds. Love, desire, ambition, hope, joy, and sadness were all here, hurtling at 150 miles per hour through the Nevada Black.

The American Dream

“I want to see the country I now call home, you know?” He said only a couple of minutes after shaking my hand and sliding into the seat next to me. The night before, my seatmate from Denver had moved to an opening slate of seats to sleep. And we both woke up with new people ready to take the seats next to us.

My new friend was an engineer, who saved up all the money he had to move from India to the United States. Looking for an opportunity in the tech boom of the West, he left his wife behind, with the assurance that he would get her to the United States once he found a settled life for them to share.

He initially landed in Reno — he had a family member there with a place for him to stay. But after months of sending his resumes to permanent job openings, he finally gave up on Nevada. He saved up the money he had from the temp work he was doing and purchased several months’ worth of housing in San Francisco. He would tempt his fate there, hopeful that being at the right place at the right time with the right skills could change his fate. And reunite him with the love he left behind.

“I want life to be stable,” he said, “And in America, there is that possibility. I still believe in the American dream. I have to, to still be here.”

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