Playing with expired Polaroid film

[Terri]

I had a darkroom too. Durst enlarger with nikkor len. And at one point I got this "device" I can't even remember the name of it - but you expose the paper under an enlarger as usual, but then instead of putting the paper into trays of developer, stop bath, hypo etc. you feed it thru this "device" about the size of a small printer, - and outcomes a black and white print! This was revolutionary for me - I no longer had to deal with trays, sped things up, plus it standardized my paper processing etc. It was a smaller version of one that at the time were used by newsrooms, etc to quickly get prints. Funny I don't remember the name, but I remember how much I paid for it --$130. - a major outlay for me at the time.

Cool!! This brings to mind the type of processor that was used in pro labs - exposing the paper and running it through. But more often than not, it was for color prints.

My husband was an aerial photographer, and ran tons of stuff through their photo lab at work. I just read this aloud to him to see if he could shed some light on what kind of processor it might be, and he's stumped. (And digging around some old stuff for a clue.) They used it for color prints, and he knows sometimes it was a peel-apart film.

How cool that you had it for home use!

Thank you for the kind words about the Polaroids up there. ❤

 

[Bongo]

I learned of it thru a small ad in a photo magazine. And it turned out the store that sold them was in town (North Hollywood).
That was the only product the store sold, and the guy's name was the same as the "machine" (started with an "S" maybe). I think he designed it or engineered it, had more to do than just selling it. He was real excited to sell it to me. Came up with ideas for business ventures for me to use it - which I wasn't interested in. I remember talking to someone about it who said the prints would fade over time. Wrong. I still have prints from it that look brand new.

 

[Terri]

Those are great Terri.. art is such small alterations to the camera called the eye

Thank you, Wayne!

 

[classic]

Automatic processors were for color as well as B&W photo. I think they were mostly used for color because the color processing needs high precision for temperature and timing. The processing times are accurately prescribed by the processing system. High temperature is used, so plastic coated papers instead of legacy papers are used. Because very few people used to take B&W after color films were affordable, lab equipment was dedicated to the color processing, and many photographers would keep process B&W by hand in order to avoid to maintain another processor for very little work.
The C-41 processed B&W films were made to be used in lab processors. Nevertheless they didn't give the same negatives as the legacy argentic films.

 

[fedetony]

those look great... very artistic...

 

[Terri]

Thank you, fedetony! Happy you like them!