I tend to cycle through my three main hobbies. Photography, guitar, and machining. Whenever I am in the photography phase, filmwasters is the best place.
I was thinking back to 1987, when I got that huge Adorama catalog, poured over and agonised which camera to replace my Canon T50 with. Narrowed the choice to T90 or OM4Ti, and got the T90. I loved that camera.
While basically memorising that catalog, I remember the NPC 195 was a very expensive camera, and I could not fathom why anyone could possibly be interested in such an expensive camera, for something as useless as polaroid film.
Fast forward to the early 2000's and the huge change from analog to digital, and one of my work mates was friends with the boss of huge photo store, and said they filled a skip bin with time expired polaroid film, and it didn't even raise my pulse.
In the mid 20teens, I finally understood it when I saw a polaroid exhibition at Westlicht. I finally understood the beauty and art of these unique images. By then all those gorgeous polaroid films like type 45 and type 559 were gone, but FP-100C and FP-3000B were still made. I started shooting with them and they got discontinued almost immediately. It was with a sense of loss that I made a final order of those films. I still have one box of FP-3000B. My next frankenstax will be based on a polaroid 180 or 195, and I will shoot that last box of 3000B before I butcher it.
I struggle with Instax in my Instafrankenroid. It can be beautiful, but is a temperamental partner. Most of my photos on look horrible. I struggle with the razor thin dynamic range. I struggle with the tendency to green hues. I struggle with the unreliable film kick out in my botched camera.
So what do a love about Film wasters? Some of you are about the only people who could understand that, or care
You are a great group, who have made this very obscure corner of the internet special.
Thank you.
Mark