adventures in instant photography

This post starts off as kind of a bummer:  the scanner I had planned to use (see: Jordan's scanner) for my photos is so old, it's not compatible with anything past Windows XP (?!?!?!).  That would explain why it was tucked away in his closet between the wall and a drum kit.

So I tried to take pictures of them and edit them so that they looked as close to the "real thing" as possible, and goddamnit, it is not easy.  The colors, the exposure, they're all just a little off.  However, because most of my spending money is pretty much tied up for the foreseeable future, I won't be able to buy a scanner compatible with Windows 7... thus, this process will have to suffice for now.

Market & Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA

I blew through one and a half rolls of color film and am working through one roll of black and white.  I say one and a half of color, it's because I ran into that pesky problem that many owners of old Polaroid Land Cameras usually come across -- the film vs. film spring issue.  Long story short, Fujifilm and Polaroid film is just sliiiiightly different, and sometimes the spring holding the film in will press too hard on Fuji packs and will fuck up some, if not all, of your shots in a pack.  (If you want to know more about that, check out here:  http://www.instantoptions.com/faqs/faqtrouble.fujipacks.php)

I eventually ended up with a few usable shots towards the end, and ended up just removing those springs.  I'm sure there are people out there who consider that kind of modification blasphemous, but to those people, I say "SUCK IT."  I'm not made of money and can't afford to ruin film like that.

Out my front window.

As you can probably tell, I'm still learning how to shoot with this thing.  I have some difficulty gauging the exposure settings, as well as some framing -- I feel like what you see through the viewfinder is not exactly what you see on the actual photo, but I'm hoping that I'll eventually be able to account for that kind of "skewing."

From my back porch.

This one was strange, because exactly where the sun is, there is a big black speck right in the middle.  I read somewhere that this might be resulting from pulling the film too quickly (which I'm sure I'm guilty of -- it's just so fun!).  However, so far I'm loving the tones and colors that this camera and film duo produce!

Once I'm finished with that roll of black and white (which I am already madly in love with), I'll share what I come up with -- including a couple of self-portraits!

Hope you're having a lovely weekend.  <3