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Polaroid Type 665 PN – RIP – A Unique and Interesting Film
Polaroid Type 665 is pretty much Type 55 in a medium format pack. A little background for those not familiar with Polaroid materials. I never really shot Polaroid materials as my primary medium. Some people have made a career out of it. Most of us old-timers did use it to check lighting and confirm everything was just right before letting it rip. After seening someone or other’s gallery show done entirely using Poloaroid Type 55 I decided to give it a try and used it as my proofing and test shots from then on out. Here is why.
Most Polaroid films give you a single print and a big gooey mess that you can use if you want to roll it onto another piece of paper – aka a Polaroid transfer – sort of. Type 55 and Type 665 give you a positive AND a negative, all you need to do to develop the real honest to goodness negative is dip it in a sodium sulfite bath and give it a rinse. This was pretty cool, the negatives had a unique look and every once in a while I shot them purely for effect. Every once in a while I ended up liking some of my first few proofs better than the other 20 shots that I made for the set and used one of the proof negatives as the final. Nice.
If you ever get a chance to play with this stuff it is a blast, has a look so unique and coveted that there are a bunch of fine art people that hoard this stuff and charge big money to shoot it on commission or save it for only the work they are sure about. I cannot believe someone hasn’t bought the license and started producing it yet. This stuff is bringing like $50 for a 10 exposure pack on eBay and elsewhere. If you do stumble across some be careful. If the sheets of material are stuck together at all inside the pack and you pull the tab and it doesn’t come out you are toast and there goes your $50. I do know some devotees actually take the old packs a apart in the dark and un-stick everything to make sure before shooting older stuff.
RB
Ps. I still have a couple of boxes of this stuff left, it really does have a unique rendering as you can clearly see through the dust and scratches on the 100% crop (Don’t ask – long story, I am usually a clean freak when it comes to negatives) I am sort of scared to shoot the stuff – anyone out there have any idea on what the recent state of affairs is with someone making 665 again?
RB,
I saw a commercial for a show on the Food Network that showed some behind-the-scenes stuff. In one of the clips, it showed some on-set still photography using what I assumed was medium-format. In that clip, the photographer removes what looks to be a piece of film from the camera back and then pulls back another piece of backing to reveal the image. Was this polaroid film like you speak of here?
The image was a color image, not black and white like your above examples, but it could have been some special effects trickery.
In case you ever watch the Food Network (who doesn’t?) the show was Simply Italian with Giadia DiLaurentis.
Most people think of instamatic cameras with dicey color and a print with a white border that pops out the front when they hear the name Polaroid. Most people don’t know what a giant the Polaroid company was. I don’t know much about their other film products but I do know that they invented the first commercial polarizers that could be made on a large scale and they also developed the cameras and lenses in the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes.
RB
I have loved Polaroid form my earliest days in Photography. Dr.Edwin Land worked the media as well as Steve Jobs. He was the handsome Physicist and Business genius behind the film and cameras. He brought in Photographers like Ansel Adams as consultants and amassed a huge corporate collection of great photography. Polaroid corporation supported photographers in a way no other company has.
I always thought Type 52 was the most beautiful with its really long scale. Type 55 P/N made better negatives than positives, but optimal exposure for the print was about a stop different than the negative.
I’ve got 2 boxes of 809 left (8×10″)and a hand crank processor, some 4×5 sample packs
and a box of 609
I’m saving them for my daughter who does image transfers and emulsion transfers.
As you say, magical stuff.
Fuji has begun importing 4×5 pack film, and there is a group in europe that have bought a Polaroid factory and are attempting to get it going.
I got to shoot once with the Polaroid 20 x 24 camera in NY, and for anyone who hasn’t seen it you should check out Joe McNally’s book Faces of Ground Zero, where he used the one and only giant polaroid camera to make lifesize portraits of some of the most storied rescue workers. Each film sandwich is 42″ x 90″. That show was the most moving exhibit I have ever seen.
There is a little application called Poladroid that emulates a little SX-70 on your desktop. You drag a jpeg onto the camera and it spits out a little square Time Zero print, complete with motor noise and slow emergence of the image.
Michael,
Always dreamed of using the big polaroid but never had the chance or the cash or the sponsors. I have seen McNally’s stuff I was moved by the people but I do not have a taste for his lighting style (I am definitely the odd man out here)
RB