My eBay SX-70 came today
Clearly I’m hooked on the Polaroid photography right now, but good as the fixed focus 645CL is, I’ve wanted to buy one of these SX-70s for a while. They’re SLRs (folding, no less), and the quality of image is supposed to be far superior to the non-SLR Polaroid cameras like the 645CL.
I’ve been watching eBay like a hawk for one at the right price, and last week this one came up for $50, which is $40-$60 cheaper than the others I’ve seen. I’m not sure why it was cheaper, but I suspect it might be because the photo of the original box in the eBay listing was for a model 3 SX-70, which is less desirable because it’s not an SLR. I was almost certain, though, that the picture of the camera was of an earlier model - and I was right.
Here it is.
It is pretty amazing the way it folds down, and to be honest it’s a bit bigger than I thought it was going to be. Jayne reckons it looks like a cigar box or a hip flask. I tend to agree. One of Polaroid’s design goals was for it to fit inside a gentleman’s suit pocket. All we can say is, it’d have to be a big suit.
Being almost as old as me, and second (or even third, fourth or fifth) hand off eBay, I didn’t even know if it would work. And by “work”, I mean work in two ways:
- Would it load the film, take a picture and spit out the photo like it should?
- Would the images be horribly over-exposed without an ND filter? (see here)
Well, it took a moment or two for me to open the camera up, but it opened. Good start.
The focus wheel, exposure wheel and viewfinder all looked OK and worked fine. Keep going.
It accepted the 600 film cartridge fine too (I used an unwanted Polaroid to help slide it in). Good, good, good.
And with some whirs and clicks it ejected the blank card OK. Fantastic.
So it was time to take a picture. We set the exposure wheel all the way to ‘dark’ (there’s lots about this on the web - until we get an ND filter of some sort it’s what we’ll have to do), convinced Max to sit still for a moment and gave it a go.
Suffice to say that the first photo we took blew us away.
I’m not sure if the web does that justice, to be honest. The colours are truer than anything we’ve had from our digital cameras or the other Polaroid camera, and somehow the image manages to be amazingly clear and soft at the same time. Just brilliant. Can’t wait to take more.
sim - November 11, 2008, 9:02 am
The design of that Polaroid camera is pure genius.
Very cool that you now own one.
margaret - November 13, 2008, 12:25 am
I’m not sure why I am surprised by this but all the photos have a wonderful 70’s look - it’s as though Saturday’s photos were taken in 1975 - as you said, it’s the way the cameras handle light and the texture of the photo that create that feelin. Very evocative of our early family shots.
Marty - November 13, 2008, 7:53 am
@Mum - Yep, and the other thing we love about them is that they are so unique. I really want to take that one of Max with me to work, but then Jayne wouldn’t be able to enjoy it. So it stays on the fridge. I could print out a scan of it but that wouldn’t be the same.
Such a shame that Polaroid has made a decision to stop making the 600 film. This new passion of ours has a limited lifespan unless another film company jumps in. We’re going to stock up on film but we don’t expect to be taking many shots this time next year. Wish we’d revived Jayne’s old camera a little earlier.