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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.

The Polaroid camera was broken for a while but unexpectedly started working again a few weeks ago. Here are some more shots.

There are others – I’m having a great time playing with the camera even though it’s very basic. Taking a picture with it is so instant and rewarding.

These photos show that I’m starting to make progress in the front yard. Finding the time is the hard thing.

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Before

Not quite so before

Today

Jayne’s painting everything cream to match the window frames. It makes a big difference to the house (front and back). Looks quieter, calmer, more set back. No idea why.

I’ve been removing fenceposts at the rate of one a weekend. Slow going. With three to go I’ll be done later this month. Anyway, here are some more photos of the front garden with the fence removed.

No words required. (Apart from those three.) (And those four.) (I’ll stop now.)

Ages since we’ve written anything. Did you miss us?

We’ve been working, sleeping, working, sleeping during the week, and gardening most weekends. I’ve started on the front garden, while Jayne has been concentrating on planting out the side part of the back garden now that the balcony’s done.

The plan with the front garden is to preserve all our beautiful shrubs, trees, bulbs and groundcover whilst completely remodelling the whole thing to create a more welcoming streetscape and an obvious entry. As you can imagine, those two goals are at odds with one another, so some of the plants have gone to the big skip in the sky, and we’ve moved others to the back garden.

I’ve almost finished removing the weird half-fence but I still have 4 fenceposts to pull out and they’re like icebergs: 2/3rds of them are underground. It takes about an hour to get each one out with the sledgehammer and the shovel. Last weekend I seriously considered hiring a mini digger to ram them instead. Anyway, when that’s done I’ll move some earth and put in some simple retaining walls to create some levels, put up a new fence that follows our boundary, and probably remove some lawn and replace it with shrubs and paths. Haven’t decided for sure on that last bit though.

It looks much better without the half-fence, and it’s easier to picture it finished. Glad I decided to take that out first before putting in the new one. It means we can’t let Maxy out there to do his business but he goes in the backyard instead. That’s not ideal because he tends to go find a bone and forgets all about going to the toilet. But never mind.

More pics when we’ve made more progress ….. but here are a few to be going on with.

We’ve always thought he lived elsewhere and only came to our house of an evening, but we were wrong. Take a look at the cheeky bugger in our palm tree.

He hasn’t messed up the balcony for a few weeks, probably thanks to my tree pruning, the nails and removing the green mesh. He hasn’t really got anywhere to sit up there now. Fingers crossed he stays away.

This weekend marked the official completion of the balcony. Peter, Christine and Jayne have put a huge amount of effort in over the last five months and they are justifiably very proud of the result. They’ve lifted, painted, nailed, sawed, measured, balanced, hammered, oiled and puttied their way to a sensational 2.5m wide x 18m long merbau-deck balcony with a retro late 80s balustrade that will still be solid in 2030. (And me? I was chief designer so can take some credit for the final outcome but not as much as the real workers.)

It’s hard to believe that I first ripped up the boards in August 2006 and we’ve only just finished it now, but there you go.

Here are a few more photos … the entire set from start to finish is on our Picasa page.

Me removing the filthy green mesh – (a) to annoy the possum and (b) so we could paint the beams to tidy things up a bit

Halfway through painting the beams. We’re completely removing the red from the house and going with a single colour. It looks much calmer one colour, strangely enough

I fixed up the garden lights around the bricked area this weekend

Looking out from the kitchen window. It’ll be sensational when we have some pots, plants and furniture out there

Peter cut two angles on each end of each slat for the steps – one at 45 and again at 25 to match the pitch of the steps. He mucked it up a few times, he reckons!

Already it looks like it’s been there forever – It blends in with the house perfectly. We were close to installing a stainless steel wire / timber posts balustrade but I’m very pleased we decided to be faithful to the house’s 80s heritage and go retro.

Last night we celebrated with a superb homecooked beef and mushroom pot pie and Peter even cracked one of his good bottles of wine to mark the occasion – a 1992 Penfolds bin 407 Cab Sav.

So that’s it. Project finished. Hooray.

Sorry to disappoint, but although we took some anti-possum steps this weekend I can’t be bothered writing about them right now. It’s been a tiring few days. I’ll get motivated to post something about it tomorrow.

I don’t have photos but trust me, he’s back.

Next weekend … it’s on. Project Alan, phase II.