Taking pictures: This is by far the easiest to use camera ever built. And it comes with a built in automatic flash. The camera has an automatic light meter as well as an ultrasound distance meter for autofocus. The earlier models shot square pictures (78×78) the Image System / Spectra series came with the new format 97×73 mm. Since then, every visitor to our home is captured with it and added to our “visitor wall”.Ībout the camera: The Image 2 is one of the newer cameras from Polaroid. was a gift from my nephew, which he found when he helped to clean up a basement. My Polaroid Image 2, known as Spectra 2 in the U.S. You pay for this with clunky camera design and ridiculous expensive films. An instant camera shows the result nearly as fast, but already as a real print. At this point it was actually still ejecting fine, but I grabbed a new (used) battery for my real pack.One of the many advantages of digital photography: you can control immediately if your picture is good or not. Through testing, I noticed it went down to about 5.5v after a pack or so -with- flash fired each time. I used a pre-used SX-70 battery that was at 6.2v or so when I pulled it out of the old cartridge. So I removed the tape and just shoved the battery underneath then it was fine. The first time around, I tried to tape the battery in even using very little tape this was enough that somehow I triggered whatever mechanism causes the Spectra to run and try to spit out film continuously. Alternately, the spring might be catching on the print ribbing I’ll have to confirm. I might take carefully try and shorten that nub. I never got the adapter to reliably eject the last exposure even when using an old shot (or two) as a ‘bed,’to keep them from catching on the small nub at the front of the cartridge. Remember, test film and dark slides eventually become worn enough that they don’t work. Test the thing with old/exposed film before using real film mine required adjusting (flattening) the spring before it would reliably eject the film and dark slide. Definitely beats shoving 600 film into an old Spectra cartridge though :) but other than the poor framing and black bar, and without the wide frame, nothing really stands out as ‘Spectra’ that will make me do it too often. But as you can see, it’s pretty much the Polaroid Originals experience it’s nice that the camera can focus to some degree, has a few bells/whistles etc. I’ll probably do it again it’s awesome that these things aren’t total paperweights and that’s important. I wasted three shots total out of the pack of eight two described in detail below, and one my fault (I accidentally exposed the top film of one of the packs, when I tried to pull out the film to re-seat the battery).Īnyway, is it worth the effort of: 3D printing the adapter, cost of batteries/charger (or film if you reuse), time tweaking the setup, transferring (and possibly damaging) film to the new cartridge, and a possibility of still losing whole shots or having black bars or other anomalies, on a used camera that isn’t guaranteed to work in the first place? I’m not sure if the ‘tear’ at the top left is related to my handling and loading the film, or an imbalance of the rollers (since there’s no longer even pressure across them with 600). It worked! Evident is my lack of memory about compensating the shot framing- black line on the bottom is not my fault though. So I took random household shots, not messing with any of the switches or anything - like some weird, normal person in the late nineties. Sorry for the less than thrilling shots here I was excited to try it quickly, and wasn’t going to go out and do anything ‘important’ with a camera I don’t totally trust. I printed a version of the Spectra/600 adapter that uses SX-70/600 batteries, rather than the (impossible to find for me) 3.2v AAAs - Still waiting for those in the mail, but pretty sure both sellers I bought from flaked at this point. Not sure anyone’s given their full warts and all experience of using a Spectra adapter- so here goes.
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