Topic: Help - My Polaroid SX70 seems to be malfunctioning!?

[matt5791]

We just decided to start stocking the Impossible film - in line with my policy of ensuring we understand what we sell I loaded a pack of the SX70 film in to my SX70 camera - this camera dates from the 70's when my father bought it new and appears in mint condition, and a beautiful thing with its brushed stainless steel and leather inserts.

Anyway - It's not a camera I have really ever used before - and it's probably not been used for 20 years.

I loaded the film pack, and it seems to be giving very very long exposures - when you press the shutter release there is the initial "flop" sound, and then you wait for up to 15 seconds (although it varies) and then the second "flop" sound as, presumably, the shutter is closing - and the photograph is ejected from the camera.

As a result the images are very light and blurry - with virtually no image visible.

I'm pretty certain it is the camera at fault, not the film pack. (I had an old Polaroid pack which was doing the same thing)

Does anyone know if this is a fixable fault?
Anyone come accross this before?

I have tried playing around with the darker/lighter dial - makes no discernable difference.

Thanks!

[Thom Stone]

Which film exactly are you using?

well If this is happening outdoors on a sunny day then I have no Idea but if you are inside that its simply because the camera is set to use quite slow film 70 iso infact, and the impossible project film... even the sx-70 stuff is more like 300. You need to tease off the metal ring around the electric eye that holds a very tiny *DONT LOSE IT!* ND filter. Replace this with a peice of clear plastic and then your electric eye will be taking in more light and ending the exposures much sooner.

On the website it says put your darken/lighten slider all the way to darken but if you do this mod you should just be able to leave it centered... I think I'am correct in saying... I havent used this stuff in my sx-70 for a while.

[Thom Stone]

http://blog.the-impossible-project.com/how-to-use-px-70-color-shade

[Thom Stone]

oh yeah also you MUST cover the film AS SOON as it comes out of the camera. you can do that little trick that Doc does in the video with the dark slide. There is a seperate video somewhere to show you exactly how to do this.