Crazy space shuttle forensics Acmel Polaroid camera conversion. or: The X- Files inspiration.

This is a screen capture of the X files episode with Mulder shooting an Acmel m-165.

Several years ago, I was casually watching X- Files reruns from a DVD while putting in my time on my treadmill, and I spied the oddest and most wonderful large camera. Mulder was taking pictures of a crime scene with what I would later find out was an Acmel Polaroid m-165 forensics camera. It was longer than it was wide, white all over with a Polaroid back grafted to the bottom. It had a bulbous barrel tip with flashes and multiple holes in the front- more like a Gatling gun than a camera. It looked like something Hollywood would make up, maybe for a sci-fi movie involving a space shuttle and future space station. You hold it the way a gunner on the deck of a ship would hold a mounted gun-one hand gripping each side with the barrel sticking straight out in front. Mulder was pointing the barrel of this gun at a body on the ground and snapping instant shots! He was not looking through a viewfinder, but rather at the subject itself by aligning two lasers. Sadly I do not remember which episode- one minute buried in 3 packed DVD sets!

It took me a while to find it, and even longer to acquire it( I am notoriously cheap when adding to my Polaroid collection). Though there is little information on this particular camera out there, I pieced together a picture with lots of google searches and blogger comments. The camera shoots 337 and 339 film. This is an extra wide and large integral instant film- bigger than spectra, and it does not have internal batteries.

The day I got it ( I believe it was from a dentist's office in California), I went on eBay and ordered some 339 films ( by now way expired- like all integral film it was discontinued). I loaded the handles with 4 C cell batteries and tried it out. The film was(not surprising) dried out and pretty useless.

I suppose I could've given up there, but this camera is sooooo cool! It comes with detachable fronts that dial in different depths of macro, some even having auxiliary flashes. The built-in front contains a ring flash and an exposure/ aperture preset. When you plug in these fronts, they push a series of pins in, resetting the aperture and speed to the optimal settings for the lens! I have 3 of the 5 fronts that were offered, and two of them I got from Germany! There was no way I was going to give up. I had to find a solution to this unique challenge(that nobody in their right mind would care about!). Little did I know then that this effort would lead to lots of mini failures!

My second effort was to borrow from a technique I developed to shoot old Kodak instant cameras. If you are not already familiar with this method, I go into more detail in my Kodak instant camera revival blog entry. In a changing bag and using the dried up integral 339 films as a sleeve, I would tuck Instax Mini into each shot and reload the film into the cartridge. One of my shots came out okay(albeit backward due to the type of film being used). Almost all the others failed. The problem was that the rollers got bogged down by the fatter film.

A side-note about the integral film: Polaroid took years and millions of dollars to refine their film. The last days of Polaroid had them putting 12 shots in their Spectra packs. The packs were sleek and light, with just the right amount of paper and chemicals for a perfect spread and perfect shot. Kodak had a brief period of R&D on their instant films before they were sued, so the pack was chunky and there were only 10 shots in a pack. The remade Polaroid film that started in 2009 under “The Impossible Project”, later to become “Polaroid Originals”, had and still has only 8 shots per pack. Fuji used and refined Kodak tech independently, and has refined film packs.

The irony is that the more primitive films(old Kodak and Impossible film) are more robust and therefore easier to twist to the will of artists, creatives, photographers, and tinkerers! The Impossible /Polaroid Originals film is great for transparencies and other manipulation by peeling, and the old Kodak instant film makes a perfect sleeve to tuck Instax film into!

I then tried all manner of cardboard shaped like the film and taped onto Instax. It was terribly impractical(waaay too much time in the changing bag) and met only with mediocre success. Disheartened, I put it back on the shelf for another day.

Occasionally I would come back to it- trying to figure out how to get the modern integral film to shoot out of this bygone film format. I bought a more dried up film and allowed myself to be disappointed each time. My Acmel Dine camera sat like a proud paperweight- a useless, but an interesting artifact of the days of Polaroid film in laboratories all around the world(Polaroid made a film that was the fastest in the world at the time-20,000 iso!).

A couple of years later and some Polaroid Pathfinder 110 conversions behind me, and I looked at this shelf object in a different light. You see, the Pathfinder to packfilm conversion is a time consuming and tedious task with a lot of filing and cutting of metal and plastic, dialing it into exactly the same film plane as the original film back. After doing something that challenging, the idea of film conversion kept returning. This camera would go from artifact to actual usability!

My third stab at getting this camera functional was to mount a pack- film back on the camera. It actually came together quite quickly, and since there were no powered rollers to contend with, it was very simple. My testing was successful, albeit quite a bit less functional. The problem was the film speed. This camera was designed for 640-speed film, so all of my shots on packfilm were underexposed. Since everything was automatically set, it would require many modifications to the pins in the add on lenses in order to dial in the film speed and aperture to fit the 100 films. Yikes! Sounds like work. It also sounds like too much modification. I want to shoot this camera, not a jumbled together facsimile of it!

Ok, so back to the drawing board. At this point, I started to disassemble various “donor cameras” for the project. I started with a Fuji wide 210 camera, before deciding that I was not OK with the film reversal phenomenon(Fuji film exposes through the back to form an image on the front, and Polaroid exposes through the front to form an image on the front). Then I started to dig into a spectra camera, only to discover that there was way too much junk I would have to account for(gears and motor) in between the film plane and the mirror. Finally, I settled on the Spectra 1200ff. Since it folds down into a small sandwich, it has all of the good stuff compacted down beyond the film plane, including the motor and gears!

Lots and lots of taping, cutting, bolts, nuts, and epoxy later, and I had a chopped down Spectra back on the rotating panel of the Acmel. All I had left to do was come up with the electronics that would allow ejection. I have been down this road before with Fuji Instax wide and mini cameras that I have modded, so I knew what I was looking for. Little did I know what I was digging into!

First off, this is a professional scientific camera with challenging parameters and amazing capabilities. Nothing about this camera is simple! At first, I thought I would use a multimeter to test and determine where I was going to draw the power for my new spectra bottom. I know I could have used the film battery to create it as a standalone, but I liked the idea of being able to shoot old, depleted battery film without effort. I wish I had gone the simple route. The cluster of wires was challenging to assign due to lack of significant voltage ( I needed 6 volts), so I decided to trace it back to the circuit board to find out where the missing volts could have been added. This made my brain hurt because as soon as I had developed a theory, I would find something that shot it down! I think I lost a half a day to that stupidity!

Eventually, I decided to have a switch and a circuit that pulls directly from the battery, and not sent thru any of the existing electronics. I rerouted the wires and mounted a red button momentary switch on the back. In hindsight this independent switch actually worked better, as I could shut the power off and devote 100 percent of the battery to film ejecting(normally you have the potential for the flash and the eject motor to draw power at the same time).

I think it is worth cautioning that whenever you are tinkering with one of these cameras with a built-in flash, be very careful around the flash capacitor. They store tons of energy and are just looking for the right sucker to zap(seriously, the charge could kill you). I use a big fat screwdriver with an insulated handle and bridge the cap pins, and the report and spark make me jump every time. This project was no exception, as the camera has a big ring flash and even plugs into an external flash with one of the fronts. I eventually want to build a variable capacitor discharger, but not today.

My hack is not pretty, but here you can see the red ejection button and a pivot button that swings the whole assembly 90 degrees, allowing landscape or portrait with the film!

My proof of concept works- and well! I have run a couple of packs of Polaroid Originals Spectra film through it with very amateur results. The camera has 10 part lightness to darkness exposure compensation, and in the heat of the moment I turned it in exactly the wrong way!

So my takeaways: 1. The Spectra 1200FF is a perfect candidate for organ donation.

2. This camera is going to take some getting used to. Though exposure control is robust, no two fronts behave the same when it comes to lighting.

3. It takes 4 C batteries and they cannot be cheap ones. The combination of the big ring flash and the film ejection will not work with dollar store batteries.

4. This camera is a blast to shoot! I am going to love burning thru some Spectra film with it! I have some ancient scientific grid film that still has some goop left in it...

Houston, we have liftoff!

Addendum: OK- so here are some samples that will help establish a baseline of functionality! They are all overexposed(user error). It has 10 levels of exposure control so that should not be a problem in the future. I got one of those "bad" spectra packs, so there was a lot of reinserting the darkslide and partial pulls(any black lines or vignetting was from that). There is a shadow of wire in the lower right that has since been fixed.

Each photo represents a different front lens module. 

A partial cure for Spectra Scarcity Syndrome. Or: Go wide or go home!

This is my ghost dog, Ollie.

If you have never gotten out that little rubber spatula to get the last of the peanut butter, this post may not be for you. For the rest of us, the idea of leaving any toothpaste in the tube or wasting leftovers is sinful. You are the ones I am writing this for.

Instant film has seen a wonderful little resurgence after digital all but crushed it in the beginning of this century. Thanks to The Impossible Project (now Polaroid Originals), most integral film styles that Polaroid made were rescued. There has been a wonderful photographic/ artistic renaissance around the new SX-70, 600, Spectra, 8x10, and I-Type films.

Lately, the Spectra film has been scarce. As far as I can tell, rumors of bad batches that jam and weak batteries caused Polaroid to slow distribution to a crawl. As of this posting, you can find some Spectra black and white film at some retail outlets.

As you may have guessed from my other postings, I save everything! There is a part of me that is always preparing for the post- apocalyptic future. I like to think it is left over influences of my childhood in the 80s and the nuclear scares of the cold war, but it likely stems from my two decades existence as a working artist/odd jobber/educator in Appalachia( dumpster Christmas is one of my favorite holidays!). When I find a thrift store Spectra camera, I check the film door. If there is an old pack half used left in there, it actually helps my buying decision. Consequently, I have quite a few partially spent packs from all of the instant film types hoarded in my film fridge.

Most old film is fairly useless, but occasionally you get lucky. I would like to share this simple trick with you: This Spectra hack is so you can try your luck with old film. The first thing to go in old film is the battery. The built in battery in the pack is what powers the camera and ejects the film. I have found that I can take a 600 or SX-70 battery from Impossible or Polaroid Originals that has been emptied, and transplant it into the Spectra pack! When you finish a pack of Polaroid Originals/TIP film, there is easily enough battery power to shoot 20 more shots or so.

This is a full Spectra pack from 2005 and an empty impossible 600 pack.

The first thing you need to do is move the film you want to shoot out of the Spectra pack. You will need a changing bag for this, and it is a good idea to have a light tight box to put the film in. This part is really simple- just put the film pack into the changing bag along with a light tight box. Then slide your hands into the bag and start unloading the film by sliding it out of the pack one by one. As you are doing this notice two things: One, notice the orientation, as you will have to put it back in the same way you took it out. Two, gently touch the pods on the end of the film( there are 3 per sheet). If they are hard and crusty inside, set those shots aside. They may be good for other projects but they will never be used as film again. If the pods feel soft, like they may have some viscous fluid inside- those are keepers! Put them in the light tight box.

Once you are done, and the film is in the box, remove the Spectra pack from the bag. Now let's get the batteries out of the packs. The Spectra pack front will unsnap and fold down easily to remove both the metal spring and the battery. Pay attention to the orientation of the spring, so you put it back the way you found it.

I should mention that this is a battery, and ideally you don't want to short the positive and negative spots, or handle it carelessly in a way that could deliver a bit of a shock(or a scare). Next, remove the cardboard back from the spectra battery. All you have to do is remove a light cellophane and they come apart. Put the cardboard on the backside of the 600/SX-70 battery and line up the battery holes. Now trace the shape of the Spectra onto the 600 with a sharpie.

The next stage seems a bit sketchy, because you will be cutting away the difference. If you carefully marked your 600 battery, you will be safe. Since you will be cutting close to the battery, use insulated handled scissors. BTW, this may be a bit of overkill because the battery isn't really as close to the edge as it looks.

Now slide the fresh battery into the Spectra pack, making sure to slide it into the grooves that secure it and push it all the way in. Put the spring back in and close it up. If you have already forgotten the orientation of the spring, just look for the part that has an indent for the film hook in one corner and match it to the space in the pack for the film hook. Snap the front, and you are ready to load it!

Put it back into the changing bag with the light tight box. Re-load the film sheet by sheet, leaving out the ones with dried up pods. Make sure to put your dark slide in last. Orient the dark slide by feeling for a tiny slip of mylar on the takeup hook corner.

Now you are ready to shoot!

In this demo I chose a pack of 2005 Spectra that I knew was going to be a long shot. I eliminated two for dry pods, and packed the other eight. When you mess with expired Polaroid integral film, do not expect much! I ended up with two interesting shots with 33percent and 70 percent coverage.

Personally I love the “bad pull” look of expired integral film. The harsh orange and purple cast is pretty great contrasted with the golden curtain, and each of the 3 pods can often behave differently giving a striped look. There is always something a little unsettling about the interior space in the image as well.

I , for one, think this was worth it! Who says you can't get blood out of a stone?

Giving your Polaroid 600SE super powers, or maximizing the view!

I have been doing a lot with my 600SE lately. It is a wonderful camera to shoot pack film with- I like the heft, it has a bright viewfinder, and a clear Mamiya lens. It is a twin to the Mamiya Press or Mamiya Universal. There are but two noticeable differences. One is that it gives you a full view shot on pack film, while there is some vignetting with the Mamiya Universal. The 600SE has a larger., more open lens mount. The other difference is that the Universal, true to it's name, can have lots of different lenses and lots of different backs. The Polaroid takes three lenses(two of the three are rare and expensive) and it is only really designed for one back! There is an adapter that Mamiya made so you could use roll backs on the 600SE(also very expensive and rare) but I don't have one.

Everything about this camera is more expensive, but I refuse to solve these issues with money. I am way too cheap. Instead, I will just see this as a fun maker challenge. So far I have: modified a Mamiya 6x9 rollfilm back that allows it to shoot 120, made a ground glass with full view so I can dial in the focus, made a blank back so I can cut and experiment with it to add unconventional film types to it, and created and tested a cb-70 back for it. I am just getting started- this is fun!

While testing the cb-70, I discovered a limitation. Part of the internal metal in the camera gets in the way of a full view, and cuts part of the image off. I decided to give this particular 600SE superpowers! This camera will have the absolute, edge to edge, 4 inch by 4 inch full view. I am taking this grand old camera from the world of medium format to large format!

With nothing more than a dremel tool, cutting wheel, a metal file, and some black acrylic paint, I made this camera ready for anything I could throw at it! This is an extremely easy project and it would be hard to do any real damage to the camera doing this- so hack away!

It is pretty simple. See the areas I highlighted in the pictures? Just trim away this metal. The bottom metal does not have to be exact- just more than “. The top, though, needs to be “ exactly so it gives enough clearance while not trimming off a metal lens stop located on the back side.

I made a mark using a silver sharpie so it would be visible on the black metal. Then I stuffed the body with plastic bags to keep the metal bits out of the body. I dremeled using a metal cutting wheel, and when I was done I cleaned up the lines with a metal file. Once I got everything fairly clean looking, I dumped the bags full of metal shavings in the trash and air cleaned the inside of the camera of any remaining shards. Then I painted the exposed metal areas with black acrylic craft paint.

See? I told you it was easy!!

Though the Goose has a wide view with no vignetting, the top to bottom view is blocked by these bits of extra metal. 

I made a mark with a silver sharpie to remove the offending metal.

I cut it away with a "Dremel" metal cutting wheel, and finished it with a file. Note that I covered the viewfinder lens with tape and shoved a Kroger bag in the camera to catch the metal shavings. Mask it better than I did- some bits still found their way into the cavity!

When cutting the top metal out it is really just a shave, because you don't want to harm the post that holds your viewfinder arm.

And finally,  paint the filed metal with acrylic paint. I tested this with my full view ground glass and it absolutely gives you a full 4x4 view!

Now we get the full dog!

A flash from the past, or resuscitating your ancient press flash.

 I like flash bulbs, flash cubes, and flash bars They are a perishables from the days of photo past that never perish. I could use an electric flash when I shoot my Polaroid Automatic 450(1963) packfilm camera, but I prefer the crackle and little whisp of smoke that comes from the Hi Power flash cubes. The 450 camera adds a little analog fun to the already primitive exploding bulbs with little metal louvers that let just the right amount of light through based on the distance from your subject! Not bad for 60s tech. With the flash bars and cubes, there is the added fun of watching the afterglow as the plastic around it buckles from the heat.

I am sorry, purist- natural light seeking photographers. I like the unique effects caused by a flash as well. A shallow flash will brighten up the subject while leaving all else in darkness, as if you had put up a black background cloth. A harsh and dramatic shadow is often cast behind the subject, somehow making the fleeting second of a photo even more compressed. Natural light is not everything- think of the tenebrism of Caravaggio, candle light creating distortions on the subjects' faces. Directing flashes is an art form in itself.

On a photo blog(sorry, I cannot remember which one) an old timer with a past life as one of the paparazzi told a tale of how you would set your Speed Graphic up with two flash guns. You would put a bulb in the first one with some of the plastic coating scraped off the surface , and a regular one in gun number two. The first one was fired to get the subject's attention, as the damage to the coating would make it explode with a very loud report. Then, when the subject was looking at you in terror, you took the shot!

A friend who spent most of his working life in photography told me that in the early days he would run around changing flash bulbs that were still quite hot until he didn't have much of a fingerprint. He said that when you were working, you often stashed spare bulbs in your pocket. There were many times that the static electricity of the carpet and his wool jacket were just too much for the bulb- giving him quite a surprise when he went to fish fresh bulbs out of his pocket!

I love using these old flash guns, but many have bit the dust. Though the bulbs themselves have withstood the test of time(if you can find them), the flash guns often have the all too familiar problem of a dead capacitor and hard/impossible to locate specialized batteries. Lately, while exploring the flash possibilities for my Polaroid 110a conversion, I decided to figure out a way to start using my 5b and 25 b flash bulbs. These were some of the ubiquitous bulbs that some early press cameras used. My goal was to find a way to breathe new life into these broken flash guns.

This DIY adventure is just part one, and what I discovered made it quite likely there will be a part two and three! My first victim was a Polaroid BC flash model 281, as it was the standard flash included with the Polaroid Pathfinder 110A that I just customized to take modern film(I blogged about that, too).

It used a Polaroid accessory hot-shoe, a capacitor, and a 15v no. 504 battery. Though you can still buy a reproduction of this battery online from china, I have found that these oddball no name batteries don't tend to last and will set you back 15 dollars a battery. The battery is almost exactly the same dimension as a common camera cr123a, so that is what I did first. I put a fresh 3v battery in, not expecting much. It did not disappoint- nothing happened. The combination of a 15 dollar battery and paying for a replacement capacitor had my cheap hobo senses tingling. I was not ready to waste money.

Then I remembered a comment on another blog about how much better batteries are today compared to the fifties. I also remembered my friend's burnt fingers from a pocket of fire! What if I dumped the capacitor altogether and just tested it with a couple volts of fresh batteries?

I held the bulb pinched to a wire with a pair of pliers. The wire ran to two cr123s in sequence. The other wire was in my nervous hands and I eased it towards the end of the bulb, wincing already from the anticipated shock I would experience. It worked! I was blind, and my heart was hammering, but it worked! Next I set about removing the capacitor and resistor in the 281 flash. With everything neatly removed, I popped in the one cr123. I grabbed a fresh flash bulb and started to load it into the socket and -Wham!- I was briefly blinded and my heart was galloping all over again! Proof of concept- though I clearly needed to isolate the battery better, a modern 3v battery can easily take the place of an old 15v and a capacitor.

Though the camera had a hot shoe built in, I wanted to bypass it and just use a pc hookup that I could use for either the flash bulb or electric flash. I simply wired it negative to ground and outside of bulb, and positive to white pc cable, then black pc cable to hot on the bulb. There was a small tab connecting the hot to the hot-shoe. I severed it so the battery would not bleed down accidentally, making it a cold-shoe.

I hooked it up and shot with it. The flash went off fine. The picture was a dud! Then I remembered my flash 101. I had it in X(electric flash) mode, not M mode, the mode for flash bulbs. Then I took the next shot- totally workable!

I can't wait to walk around with a pocket full of fresh bulbs, my 110a , and some Fuji FP100c. I really want to try that paparazzi trick!

Remove the old battery, capacitor and resistor.

Cut the connection to the positive tab so the hot shoe is non-functioning.

Connect negative battery terminal to ground(yellow wire added).  Hook one wire of the pc cable up to the positive battery terminal and the other up to the center of the bulb socket.

Insulate area around battery terminals with electric tape to avoid shorting.

Pop the battery in and put the dish back on- you are ready to try it!

Here is the flash using the cold-hoe mount.

It also points to the side- you've never had it this good!

Here is the flash mounted on a bounce bracket pointing up.