This film popped up in my deep Ebay searchings and it took a little research to figure out what it actually was. I got so far caught up into its original uses and how the neat hand crank “instant” developer worked, that by the time I read up on how many other people’s attempts with rolls utterly failed, I had already won a couple auctions. It’s not a cheap experiment, but it’s also not Infrared expensive either.
Anyway, after committing to a roll of Polaroid’s instant line, one must also purchase one of their Autoprocessors. You can get one shipped for under $20 on Ebay, or I’ve found one for $5 a at thrift store.
There are 4 different versions of Polaroid’s on-the-spot line. They were all in one form or another developed for creating quick pre-Powerpoint slides for presentations.
You have your
Polachrome for full color slides
Polapan for black and white slides
Polagraph for graph slides
Polablue for blue tile card slides
Each roll comes with its own chemical pack that punctures when placed in the Autoprocessor, which then applies onto your film via another film that’s all slathered up with developer. The Autoprocessor does all this via a hand crank which spins the rollers forward, then when finished (and the timer goes off), backwards until everything rolls back up. You wash any remaining goop off your film in the sink, and Polaroid claimed the whole thing from start to mounted slide was 5 minutes.
Should be easy enough, right?
Oh, I should have mentioned, the films (along with the chemical packs) are all heftily expired- Like 1980’s expired. That would explain some unpredictabilities and crispy processing materials noted by others.
So on to the test results!