Thanks for the recommendation, @swerdnaekalb! Now to figure out where that spot comes from…
And, coincidentally*… it’s Polacon 5: #PolaconVirtual edition! If you’re reading this on the weekend of 9/25-27/2020, grab an instant camera and join in the fun if you can.
I loaded this pack just after swerdnaekalb left his very helpful comment on my Instant Fun post back in May. After determining that cleaning the rollers was successful, it took me almost 4 months to finish the pack…
Just a head’s up, for the unaware or those (like me) who forget: (new) Polaroid film has a very short shelf life and the color begins to shift within a month or two of manufacture. The boxes of Polaroid I’ve had standing in the fridge were acquired in January or February and have a manufacturing date of 10/19 on them. The first pack, shot between October 2019 and March 2020 was already going pink by the end of the pack, and this pack, the second is pink all over and has been cold stored the entire time.
Polaroid claims best results within 6 months, but I think it’s closer to 3, and you best be always shooting fresh film.
I like the two suns and great flare I got on this one, but the color is bad and, I don’t know, I’m not feeling it… Not “feeling” much of anything lately. Well, that’s not quite true, but photographically speaking, I’ve been numb for months.
The Impulse SE mostly sat on the shelf for the months after I verified that cleaning the rollers solved the banding issue I had, and after realizing the color was waaay off grrrrr, and then one day I grabbed it and quickly took three selfies with the lighten/darken slider in each of its three positions, just to see what would happen…
Other than the color, or with some color correction, that last one might make a good selfy for social media…
Ah well. @swerdnaekalb is right… Instax Wide is probably the way to go, and for lo-fi instant, the LC-A or LC-Wide and Instant back, while small, give generally better results, I’m sorry to say. I’d really love to love Polaroid, and I guess I do, I just can’t trust the product long term. Oh well.
I have three packs from 10/19 in the fridge, and need to shoot them all at probably +1 as quick as possible, perhaps while trying to figure out where that spot is coming from. And then, if I’m going to try to emulate Dawoud Bey’s Polaroid multiples thing, I need to use fresh film and maybe pick up another, better, Polaroid camera, or get better with the Lomo’Instant Square that I’d love to sell, or decide rectangular images are fine and use either the Instax Wide or LC-Anstax. What I can’t do is buy film on sale or whim and then use it whenever the mood strikes. Oh well.
*I wrote this post some weeks before it went live… I only realized Polacon was this weekend, well, on Thursday night before this post went up on Friday. Hopefully, I have the SE Loaded with one of the packs and am shooting away.
