As promised I have played a little bit with the 4×5 Omega! Here is the first and only color Polaroid to come out of it :)

Impromptu My Friend Lisa band photo!

So three weeks ago I get this email :)

Hello

Good day. My name is James Brown and am sending this email regard to order some Fuji Films and do you have the size FP100c.If yes email me with the price and if not email me with the size you have and also what form of Credit Card do you take for payment.

Thank You.
James Brown
James photo ltd

So we all had a good laugh about this because well you are looking at this site (If you are reading via RSS Click here and go to the site for full effect.) is there anything about this site that would suggest I am a store? No didn’t think so. Ha Ha n00bs on the internets!! right? Well today I received this email.

Hello

Good day. My name is David Lister and am sending this email regard to order some Fuji Films and do you have the size FP100c.If yes email me with the price and if not email me with the size you have and also what form of Credit Card do you take for payment.

Thank You.
David Lister
David photo ltd

new scam?? odd stuff?  I googled snippits of the bad english as well as david photo/james photo to see if it was the same as some other bad scam but got no hits. I am tempted to email back and say yes I sell it just to see what happens. However, just incase it isnt clear I don’t sell polaroid film.

Today I shot with a model named Alicia whom I have worked with a number of times, but always on standard ordinary commercial catalog shoots. Today I really wanted to play with all my film cameras and such so 85% of the shoot was shot on old cameras. This is a just a smattering of the few digital/Polaroid shots that I took today. I will get more up when the film gets all developed.

Some Canon 5d shots

These are from the Polaroid Land Camera shooting Fuji FP100C

Type 600 shot on the SX70

More Polaroid Land Camera shooting Fuji FP100C

This is the analog product of the day. We have just about every (good) kind of film format known to man :) 120, 35, Type 600, Pack film, Type 55, etc…

Anywho I am off to a pub for food.

I know i just posted, but this started as a reply comment on this post, but it turned into a long rant So I figured it should be its own post.

I thought long and hard about Polapremium this morning and I ended up even more disappointed. I was looking for long term and I instead affronted with just how temporary it all is. I have a rule, if it costs more then $3.00 a shot I need to be making good money at it, or it better knock my socks off in some other way. Most things that I would buy from Polapremium unfortunately doesn’t meet that code. I don’t mind spending extra to support people/businesses doing cool things, but I think I will take all the money that I could have spent at polapremium and use it to buy more of Fuji’s instant stock on a long term regular basis. My feeling is, lets support the long term guy, the guy who is going to be around for a while. I am going to stick with my normally attractive and funny long term girlfriend, instead of dumping her for a fleeting romance with a super model with a coke habit that will last an intense week, but be left in the end with nothing but heartbreak and regret.

My Omega 4×5, the 360 Land camera, and I will happily shoot our Fuji FP100C with fantastic results and well into the foreseeable future.

Now because I obviously have heaps of time and absolutely no work to do I figured I would poke around and see what the rumor mill has to say about this whole polapremium business. What I have to say is that people initially seem to be about as skeptical as I am at first.  That is not to say that there aren’t a few metric tonnes of hope floating about out there.  Near as I can decipher from random rumors, and peeps in the know dropping hints, is that Polaroid and Unsaleable.com have teamed up to release a last run of instant films.  Rumor is saying that a release of a type 600 and possibly a replacement film for the SX70′s (that is not to say that they are releasing time zero again, my guess would be that they are releasing a type 600 that either has a built in ND filter or is a slower film closer to time zero’s ISO 150). It does seem however that the focus is going to be on the continuation of the integral films (non peel apart films) with little to no mention of pack films.

The British Journal of Photography recently published that Unsaleable.com (who is indirectly the registered owner of polapremium.com btw) was able to convince Polaroid to “produce an outstanding amount of breathtaking film, before closing down their factories”  “Many of these films are completely new products, never produced before” – spokesperson for polapremium.com

This is all super awesome except I am concerned that this is going to be nothing more then a short term run of Polaroid films that will quickly run out and within a year we will be left where we are right now. I also worry that the price is going to be an unbelievable ridiculous and arbitrary amount that would also make the long-term use of these films impractical for most, which is not unlike unsaleable to do.

What I hope to see is a return of square film formats like the type 87 or 84 because all my pack film cameras (with the exception of my land camera of course) shoot square leaving a black edge on the photo.  I would like the Polaroid to be the finished product but that stupid black edge is so ugly.  It gets to the point that I don’t shoot Polaroid with my Mamiya or Holga anymore (other than for the very few precious remaining boxes of type 84/87 I have left in my fridge).

One other possible bit of good news, that I am hoping is true, is that Polaroid may have licensed out production of type 664 and 667 films to Fuji.  The 664 I don’t really care about but in my humble opinion the 667 is a far superior Black & White then the Fuji FP 3000B.  In fact the 667 is the only medium format Polaroid brand pack film that I am sad to see go. I would also love to see the large format 8X10 etc.. come back but here I know that I am dreaming! :)

In my humble opinion what Polaroid should have done is stopped shipping date sensitive product to every Wal-Mart, London Drugs, and small town photo store in the world, and instead moved to an entire mail/internet ordering system.  Condensed the entire instant film section of the company down to their two remaining factories and have two shipping departments and a kick ass website/online presence.  Instead of having a large bloated company with sales offices all over the bloody world doing god knows what, streamline the whole thing down to the bear necessities.  It is not like the bulk of us die-hard Polaroid users haven’t been internet ordering our precious film for the last couple of years as it is.  I don’t claim to know how it all works but I will be shooting film/Polaroid till it becomes too expensive to do so. The dificulty is I am super cheap, and this sorta work makes me absolutely no money, so I fear that day is too quickly approaching.

The other day Coaxial and I went to Beau Photo to grab some pack film and the like.  I love that Beau is making a commitment to stock all sorts of films and the best variety of plastic cameras that I am aware of in the lower mainland, but we were in for quite the shock when we went to pay for our film.  Coaxial tossed down their last 10 pack of Fuji FP100C and a twin pack of Polaroid 667 onto the counter and started fishing around for pocket change to pay for it. That will be $78 please.

Errrrr.. What? that doesn’t sound right…. are you sure that we have the right things listed?  After some verification over the phone with some mystery character in the back he assured us that this was in fact the new and correct price for their Polaroid film.  Now I know that you are the only people in town that somewhat reliably stocks this stuff, and I know that Polaroid has disco’d all of the ‘instant’ product line, and I know that you are a business and you are here to make money, but doubling and in some cases nearly tripling the price of all your Polaroid films is a little silly!  I even dug out older receipts to see and last time I bought Fuji FP100C (which they are not even discontinuing) I payed $12.26 for it.  They wanted $25!

I came home fired up B&H photo, went to the film section, and bought a whole whack of stuff!

• 2 packs of the Fuji FP-3000B for $9.95 each (I have never tried it, but I hope it is super contrasty)
• 2 packs of the Fuji FP-100C at $8.99 each (that is $16.00 cheaper)
• 1 twin pack of the Polaroid 690 for $25.00 (as opposed to the $42.00)

all for the total price of $43.94. That is 60 exposures with a variety of films for nearly the same price that they wanted for 1 twin pack!!

The way I look at it is that I have somehow saved money so I also grabbed 25 rolls of Kodak Portra 400VC 120 & 35mm and some new colour paper developer for when I get the dark room rockin again!

That aside they are still awesome in other ways. everyone should check out and enter Plastic Photographer

So I am not one to usually advocate these sorts of things for they tend to fall into the realm of Crap and other useless BS, but I will promote this one.

Save Polaroid Film!! OR www.savepolaroid.com

Now I am not naive enough to think that sending 5000 or 10,000 signatures to Polaroid will make them reverse their decision to stop making something that isn’t making them money. They are a company not a socialist nation! We are talking instant film here!! A medium that provides inferior image quality when compared to even the most crappy cell phone camera! We are not curing cancer. (ironically I am sure this film actually causes cancer) we simply wanna dabble in old camera futility. But yet here I am toting this as something you should do. I like Polaroid film and Polaroid’s decision to stop making it doesn’t mean it won’t exist anymore it will just be expensive and hard to get. Fuji still makes pack film (in fact the Fuji FP-100C is far superior to 100 speed Polaroid film, but the black and white FP-100B sucks) and they should see the sales increase with Polaroid out of the market! Heck they may even expand their line (I doubt that would ever happen) The point is I can hope that 5000 or 10,000 or 500,000 of us can change the minds of some corp executives that make much more then I do, I just don’t think it is likely.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

So Josh & I decided a while back that a road trip to see Matthew Good play in Banff was in order. So we did and I am in Banff! I took a lot of Polaroid’s along the way! But a long drive, a late couple of nights followed by early mornings, and a single beer have made me very tired! So I am going to sleep now in my cheap hotel.

Really I do!! So I am waiting for a package filled with new (well used but new to me) camera goodies to arrive via UPS, I get up this morning and I refresh the tracking page to see this :|

THE RECEIVER DID NOT HAVE FUNDS AVAILABLE ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT.
A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

I am like umm….. and after confirming with Miranda that I didn’t turn the UPS guy away in my sleep, I have to say that I am glad that whomever they did try to deliver the package to didn’t have any money!

Much phoning and yelling has yet to materialize my package, but I am hopeful that it will get delivered to someone! Josh was kind enough to provide me with this comic that expresses everything I am feeling right now in a nice succinct nutshell.

Update!! They (UPS) have informed me that the driver will be trying again in 10min! I will try and see where the package nearly ended up :)

Update!! The UPS guy came and fumbled around a lie that was part way between “That is just what I wrote down” and “I tried this morning and there was no answer!” OHHHhhhhh so angry with them!

In happier news M is now the proud owner of a Mamiya RB67! I got her a matching camera (I won’t allow matching clothing but a matching camera that’s ok!) because she has half a fridge full of Chocolate Polaroid film! She thinks that it really is a bowling ball with the name Homer! But it isn’t really! I am removing barriers to her creativeness! Oh well it came and it is fun.

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 4.5
Shutter: 1/30
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

A Polaroid of this fish cooler type things near Westham Island.

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: ?
Shutter: ?
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

A Polaroid of a shed in the Ladner Delta area.

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: ?
Shutter: ?
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007

Yup its the time of year in which large piles of pumpkins acumulate all over Delta! We were there today and i took this polaroid

Camera: Mamya RB67
Aperture: 3.8
Shutter: 1/30
Lens: Mamya 50mm
Film: Fuji FP-100C Polaroid Pack Film
ISO: 100
Date Taken: Sept.22.2007