Rainbow stripe full manual mod

I've finally been able to rig up one of the rainbow stripe SX-70 cams to be full manual exposure. After mutilating about 5 of these things I think I got one working now. What I did was take off the front plastic peice that covers the lens, shutter button, viewfinder and all that stuff. First you gotta open the film door, then you can pry from either side of that cover thing with a screwdriver to get it to pop off. It just snaps on and off. Next I popped out the plastic lens. now you can see the shutter. You may have to pop an empty film cartdrige in to get the shutter to close for you. See you want it closed for this next part. The drill. Well actually I used a little dremel tool with a drill bit. I just poked it in the shutter hole and drilled out the shutter. If you got the empty film cartdrige in there you can snap the shutter button a few times while your drilling to kinda route out any peices of the shutter that needed to be cut off. What all this amounts to is a drilled out shutter so its always open, but you can still press the shutter button to run the motor to spit the film out. See it needs to still be able to do that cause the film needs to go through those rollers to spread the emulsion. You will also need to make you some sorta lens cover to go over your lens when you're not using the camera so it won't be exposing the film in there.

SX-70 time zero emulsion transfers

I just did this recently and it's real easy to get the hang of. I take my picture and wait around a minute or two to let it develop. Then I cut out just the picture, none of the white boarder. I then submerged it in hot water and let it sit there for 30 seconds or so then with some sorta tool (I used a long push pin don't ask me why it's all that was around) you can seperate the emulsion layer from the black backing and slowly peel it from that black backing and let it stick to the clear front peice. It takes a little practice to get use to this. Once you got it all off the black backing you can take it to whatever you wanna stick it on and lay it down onto it. I put it on some watercolor paper and that seemed to work nicely. It's gonna be wrinkly but you just have to deal with that. You can now peel off the clear plastic peice. I guess it would maybe adhere to other stuff like wood or glass I just haven't tried that. Cutting open polaroid film isn't the safest thing to do so do this at your own risk.

Polaroid Spectra Multiple Exposures

I recently acquired a Polaroid Spectra System camera at the thrift store. Wow what a find and only $3.88. I found that with its timer feature you can take multiple exposure pics. What I do is open it up, set the timer and let it take its picture. Then it seems it won't spit out the pic until you flip the timer switch back. So I just close the camera without flipping the switch back up and then open it back up with the switch on. Now its taking another picture so you better be ready to take the picture when you open it back up. When you want it to spit out the pic, just flip the switch. I guess you can take as many exposures on on peice of film as you want. I've only done two on one.

SX-70 pic that I cut open on both sides and top and peeled apart while it was developing. I liked the random tear (that white line) of the emulsion on this one.

Taking out the shutter of your pack film camera

So you want a full manual exposure land cam? It's real easy to do. Also, since these things are so cheap and easy to find at thrift stores you can try all sorts of different things with them. The way I removed my shutter from the various land cams is by taking the front part where the shutter is off by unscrewing the 3 or 4 screws on the back of that front part. The part on the front of the bellows. Once I took that apart it was easy to see the shutter peices and just take em all out. You dont need any of that. Then I just put the screws back in and made me a little lens cap outta cardboard and black electrical tape and I was ready to go. And as for batteries well you dont need any cause all they do is work the exposure system. Make sure you always have some kinda lens cap on and that the rest of the camera is light tight. You dont want any light leaking in and exposing that film. Now it's up to you to experiment with exposure times and lighting. I have used a manual flash, candles, flashlights, etc. wich were all pretty sucessful. On a related note if anyone has been able to make a fully manual sx-70 or 600 camera by removing the shutter or otherwise I'd love to hear about it.

Those yellow arrows are where the screws are located on most all land cams with the bellows. For others like colorpacks and such that don't have bellows the screws are located in essentially the same place.

That's a little lens cap. Not too pretty but it serves the purpose.

Battery Woes!

If you don't feel like trying to hunt down some obscure battery for your Land camera this could be your solution. This is a super easy modification too so dont worry. There are a number of ways it can be done as well. I'll just tell you how I did it. First off, I went to Radio Shack and bought a little battery holder pack thingie that holds two AA batteries and it had a positive and negative wire coming from it so I also got some tiny alligator clips and soldered one onto each of the two wires. Red being positive and black is negative. Then you can attach each of those two alligator clips to the two battery clips in the camera. I also put velcro on the battery box and on the camera so I could attach the battery box onto the back of the camera. Using a file I made a small knotch on the side of the battery door on the Land camera so the two wires going into it don't get pinched.

SX-Holga !?! Not quite ready for prime time...

Here is a funky mod - a Holga and SX-70 marriage that's still got some kinks to work out. Neat though!

http://nikomat.homeip.net/priv/camera/SX-HOLGA/