In the past two weeks, I bought a couple of Polaroid Land Cameras: the big old folding things, which take packfilm (3¼ × 4¼"). A Model 240:
which came in a complete kit in a case: portrait lens and viewfinder attachment, UV filter, flash gun with two bulbs, original leather strap in good condition. All for about $65 including shipping. (Plus about $15 for a pair of fresh batteries.) The fatal flaw was that the electronic eye, which controls shutter speed, was not functioning. I am in negotiations with the seller who had reassured me before I bid that the camera was functioning.
So, I plonked down $100 from a reputable seller, who sells lots of Land Cameras. It's a Frankenstein: the main body, including front lens and electronic assembly, combination viewfinder/rangefinder (by Zeiss), and bellows, are from a Model 350. The back is cannibalized from a different model. (In addition to the color, which was not a 350 color, the battery compartment was labelled to use a 4.5V battery while the 350 uses 3V batteries.) The battery holder had been modified to take 2 AAAs instead of a weirdo size. A good cleaning and fresh light seals rounded out the refurbishing.
Now, the standard Polaroid films of the time came in speeds of 75, 150, 300, and 3000. However, Polaroid no longer makes them. Fujifilm has a beautiful 100 ISO color film, the FP-100C, and a high speed 3000 ISO B&W film, the FP-3000B. Using the 100 ISO film means tweaking the exposure compensation dial (up to +2 stops, and -1 stop).
I shot a pack of film to figure out how to compensate exposure without manual controls, with one exposure wasted because I managed to rip the paper pull tab on one.
And just now, I found that someone had uploaded basically all the packfilm Land Camera repair manuals to Scribd. Brilliant! Maybe I can figure out how to fix the broken 240.
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