Which Board? > Articles

INSTAFRANKENROID - Hacking a Polaroid land camera for Instax.

(1/4) > >>

rotarysmp:
Hello Filmwasters,

I have been a member here for years, but with long periods of inactivity as I tend to cycle through my hobbies (Photography, guitar, machining).

My daughter bought an Instax 210 while travelling, and has been using it a lot. This bumped my enthusiasm for a project which has been on the back burner for a while. I hacked a 100 Automatic Land camera with a Mamiya 105 f3.5 from a TLR a few years ago, and then the last call for pack film followed shortly after. Having consumed all but one remaining box of FP-3000B, that camera has lurked in the deepest recess of the closet, till now.

There are plenty of bodged up Instax wides gaffer taped to Land cameras and Pathfinders, but I hadn't seen much information on optimising such modifications. The aim being to couple the excellent Zeiss combined range/viewfinder accurately to a fast and sharp lens with manual aperture and shutter control and a flash shoe.

Here is the first episode of my attempt to document such an Instafrankenroid.
https://youtu.be/UHYeu-3LmRk

In an idea world, hacking Instax wide to the original film gate of a Polaroid 180/190, while keeping the rangefinder system would be the holy grail.As you can see, the design features central to both designs are unfortunately in direct conflict in the upper focus arm/development roller area.
Mark

Francois:
Conversions are definitely never easy.
I discovered that when I converted a colorpack to use full size 4x5 sheet film. Took me a lot of planning and about a week of work and problem solving to manage to create something that works.

rotarysmp:
Hi Francois. I have been be agonising over the unsolvable compromises of this conversion for a couple of years. Figured there was no way I could optimise it in one go, so it was better to get stuck in a hack together a prototype and see how my ideas pan out.

I also have 110A + 900 Rangefinder to 4x5 half finished.
Mark

cs1:
That's rather impressive, Mark! I hope that you'll succeed. I'm thinking about buying an old polaroid back for my Bronica SQ-A and hacking an Instax Square mechanism on it. Looking at your video inspires me to actually try getting the parts and giving it a go. :)

Francois:
One thing I never figured out is why nobody ever manufactured a cheap 4x5 compatible Instax film back? That would make things so easy.
I do know that the Lomo Belair had an optional instant back, but at close to 400$ for a plastic hand cranked gadget, it was pretty much out of price for anybody.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page