When someone asked me “what’s next” at Polacon NYC almost one year ago, I didn’t think anything else would be on the pipeline.
Lo and behold I’m working on two projects, both very close to a working prototype and then production:
- A Polaroid Big Shot adapted to shoot modern integral film AND with a flash-sync socket + an “dumb” flash on a removable bracket on top. Just add film and shoot! Don’t have a name for it yet, my dear friend Gregory Hevelin makes these with instax wide backs and calls them Big Stax and Mario makes a redesigned from the ground up version with a large format lens and calls it Big Roid. I decided the Big Shot is a fixed focus rangefinder designed to do one thing – flash portraits and went Gregory’s way, but for Polaroid film.
- Polaroid Land cameras adapter to shoot Instax Wide using your own Lomograflok! Yes, it’s possible, and apparently without messing with the rangefinder! I will mod my second Polaroid 195 to do this, and a few Polaroid 250, 350, and 450 I have around! And I will be offering this as a service for your own Polaroid Land camera! I’m very excited about this one
I’m also working on two other little related project, both Instax Wide based:
- Rehouse Fuji Instax Wide guts to make an Instax Wide back with Polaroid 600SE hooks – but this will ONLY work on the Polaroid Portrait 203 cameras – too long of an explanation why not on a Goose. This would have centered hooks, automated eject but still no film counter.
- Rehouse Lomo Wide guts, but to add a Mamiya Universal Press Mount on it for a better looking Mamiya Instax Wide zone focus camera with a film counter and automatic eject, and MUCH better viewfinder compared with the current mod based on Fuji Instax Wide.
And no, I’m still not making Instax Square backs for Mamiya RB67, there’s already a very affordable solution out there .
