As my post yesterday suggests, I recently found my mislaid Polaroid Automatic 100 Land Camera (made sometime from 1963-1966). Until yesterday, I had four refrigerated packages of Polaroid Peel Apart Sepia (2) and Blue (2) filmpacks, all of which expired in 2009 (per the foil seal) or 2010 (per the Impossible Project's repackaging).
One package of sepia was bulging (not a good sign). The chemistry packs must have leaked - the media is all stuck together, and can't be pulled into position in my camera. One Blue pack made an appearance in a post yesterday: it delighted me.
This left one package of Sepia and another of Blue for my outing today. Both seemed intact. A test photo in my backyard showed the Sepia was viable, despite being ISO 1500 in a camera without any exposure settings anywhere near that. (75, 150, 300, or 3000!?!?). Setting the camera to 3000 and turning the dial around the lens toward 'darken' worked fine.
I decided to use these last exposures on favorite buildings, mostly new ones that weren't around when the film was manufactured.
Some of the Sepia media had dried up, so the chemistry didn't make a complete image. But five images came out well enough. The Blue was much better: every frame developed completely. I double-exposed one, despite coffee. The chemistry left on the paper, which is exposed and creates the image on the printing paper as a sort of contact print, was WILD and interesting to look at. (See samples below.)
The prints are unexpectedly stickier than similar ones were in the past, likely because the chemistry is more viscous. I've wiped the caustic development paste off as well as I could, and wound up getting it on my hands and jeans. Hopefully the most caustic components were largely consumed in developing the film.
I'm delighted to have refrigerated these packages so diligently over the last 15 years, and to have finally used them on places that feel special to me. The Land Camera warmed up and worked well, much better than yesterday! The shutter stability / sharpness both increased.
Today wasn't this camera's final outing: I found a mislaid package of kickstarter (very expired) One Instant Packfilm to use, which I believe contains 3 exposures; I surprised myself a few years back by ordering a very expensive DIY kit from the same company, which arrived recently (8 exposures); and there is a chance I can obtain an Instax back for it, so I can use a popular film that is still manufactured! I look forward to each of those adventures.
