the polaroid land camera #250, instant photo surprises, and underpants

My birthday is coming up, so I bought myself a little gift:  this Polaroid Land Camera model 250, complete with accessories, from Katie at Skunkboy's Reloved shop.  Not knowing whether or not it worked it was a bit of a gamble, but upon hearing that "click-click" of the shutter once I got a battery in her, it was immediately a steal.

Shooting with these cameras is kind of tricky... I'm slowly starting to get a handle on the framing, but it's a trial-and-error process.

Sometimes you'll see a great shot, and think you have it lined up properly, but end up with something like this:

So then you have to get creative... and sometimes you end up with magic you didn't even see coming (I didn't see those leaves in the viewfinder!):

And sometimes you'll succeed in gauging how to avoid unwanted extras, like cars and the tops of people's heads:

And sometimes you'll manage to sneak an awesome photo of one of your neighbors' colorful underpants on the clothesline:

And all of those off-center, crooked, under- or over-exposed photos are made absolutely, totally worth it.

The differences between my first Polaroid Land Camera (the 100) and this one (the 250) are somewhat minimal, but the 250 is considered an "upgraded" version of the 100... it has the gorgeous Zeiss-Ikon viewfinder that can jack the price up into the triple digits pretty easily, so saying that this $55 set was a steal was an understatement!  The camera was in great condition (no peeling bellows like in my 100, and no corrosion in the battery compartment *OR* in the flash gun!) and shoots like a damn dream.  And maybe it's just made up in my head, but I swear the 250 is lighter-weight than the 100, making me want to carry it around more!

I'm sure I'll be posting a lot more of my shots here, but if you're on Flickr and want to follow along, you can find my Flickr page here.

Thanks again to Katie for offering such an incredible piece of equipment and taking good care of it!