Vale FP-100C

Trolling through the internet this weekend I found a DP Review post saying that the Fujifilm company will discontinue their packs of FP 100C instant film. These are the packs with 10 exposures inside that fit into the Hasselblad, Rollei, Polaroid, and other holders - the 100 series size. They got rid of their production of of the 4 x 5 packs a couple of years ago.

I am saddened, but with no involvement in the HB or 4 x 5 world at present, I cannot say that I will be injured by it. Those people who still take preliminary exposures with their Hasselblad film cameras or proof out other things on other cameras will be stranded eventually. The small newsagents and others who use the Polaroid four-lens cameras to take passport photographs will be hardest hit.

Mind you, they were hard hit even when supplies were readily available - the business of getting a picture with a chemical instant print that satisfies the computer whizz kids of the airport passport controls - and the grey sleeveless minds of the DFAT - was proving pretty fraught. The chart of do's and don'ts was based upon making a robot image of real people and failed badly most of the  time. I watch the same job being done in post offices with something that looks like it a Sony specialised system and wonder if the results even come up to the old Polaroid shots.

Well, if you need the FP-100c there will likely be some floating about at the end of production, and as it keeps pretty well, you would be advised to get it while you can. It is unlikely to be reproduced in any usable form in Holland.

Talk to the sales staff at CE and see if there is a schedule for end of supply. And if you need a passport photo remember that the shop has a dedicated little digital system and printer that can turn out a pretty reasonable product to satisfy the unreasonable ideas of DFAT.

Note: This in no way affects the Fujifilm Instax cameras or the film for that. That's a different system entirely, and by the reports we see, is going like Gangbusters for Fujifilm.

For all Fujifilm Cameras available to order and in store please visit our website.

The Instant Phenomenon - Fujifilm Instax

Did goe to a sales conference on the weekend and was greatly amused. Salesmen selling to salesmen is always a fun spectacle. And I like the fact that most of these conference places have bowls of mints on the table...I always wear a coat with big pockets...

Well, one of the topics that passed briefly was the Fujifilm Instax cameras and film. It would appear from what the retailers were saying that these cameras have become one of the necessities of life in Australia - a little behind air, water, and food, but in front of shelter and medical attention.

I am delighted - the Fujifilm company makes a good product in these modern instant cameras and their film is excellent - far better than that other instant product that we used to get in the 1970s, 80's and 90's. Fujifilm colours pop instead of flop, and they last as well - I know this from personal experience - there is a studio fish bowl full of test shots taken on Fujifilm FP 100C packs over the last 20 years, and the colours at the bottom of the bowl are as good as to ones at the top.

It would appear that the Fujifilm Instax cameras are big in the big retailers - they cycle through billions* of them each Christmas, and everyone else who wants to sell them needs to get their orders in early. So they do, and so we do, and you can snap away happily all bthrough the holidays.

The very success of the devices tells us that there is a reward that people feel from having a real photo in their hand. Seeing your face on a screen is all very well, and with a bit of care that image can be seen all over the known world - but we still treasure a picture of ourselves and our nan in a little frame on the bedside table.

Which accounts for the success as well of the Fujifilm Instax Share. It is a printer that converts a mobile device image to a real Fujifilm Instax Mini print. There are instructions with it that explain using the wireless transfer and help people to make the best use of whatever they have on their phone.

Of course some phones are better than others...my old Nokia does not actually take pictures but if you press the right buttons on it, people will deliver pizza to your door. I have always accounted this an advantage over just taking pictures - I have Fujifilm X-series cameras for this task and they perform it well - but they would be poor instruments to make pizza with...

Mmmm. Pizza...wonder how close we are to lunch hour...?

* It might not have been billions. I was busy eating mints at the time...

Whole Lotta Snappin' Going On...Instax Film

Our warehouse prospecting team has discovered a seam of Fujifilm.

A rich horde of Fujifilm Instax Mini film in the economical twin-pack has come to light and the Instax cameras ( and Polaroid 300) that you gave or got for Christmas can start putting out party pictures again.

It's fresh so get in while the getting is good.

Save the Christmas Lunch Party With Fujifilm

I don't want to depress you, but Christmas lunch is coming. You will be required to bring a plate - with food in it.

 Apart from the beer fridge, and possibly the pudding, there will be few other saving graces. Time will slow to a stop about 3:00 in the afternoon and only the start of a roaring sibling's fight will enliven the day.

It needn't be this way. This year arm yourself with a Fujifilm Instax Share printer and some packets of film and step into the breach. Become the family hero. Get invited back next year. Here's how you do it:

The Fujifilm Instax Share is a magic little printer that will take the images that people put on their smart phones and print them out onto Fujifilm Instax instant film - it scoots out of the printer and develops in your hand in 90 seconds. The novelty of it and the fact that everyone will have been drinking will ensure that a number of memorable selfies will occur. With the Fujifilm Instax they can be printed in hard copy - far safer than firing them onto Facebook.

We've got plenty of them so take the opportunity to buy yourself a present.

Still Very Much Alive

On my private Facebook page I sometimes read positive assertions from friends that they don't make film any more. Then I come to work and look at the fridge full of different varieties of fresh 135, 120, and 4 x 5 film. Colour neg, colour transparency, black and white, infra red, instant peel-apart...if they are not making it, where does it all come from month after month?

I have stopped believing in the supernatural, so that rules out film fairies. I suspect that the factories that coat the emulsions are still going and the business is very much alive - good news for users of older analog cameras. Depending upon which camera you have, you should be able to shoot film long into the future.

Note: if you are using Leica or Hasselblad cameras they will last four years longer than forever anyway...

Note also that the pro labs are still going strong and can cope with ( nearly ) anything you can load into your camera. The lab techs might shake their heads but they soldier on anyway.

Have Your Passport Ready...

The business of passport photography has been a little fraught in the last few years. The Department Of Getting You Out Of A Foreign Jail subscribed some time ago to a system  of biometric measurement designed to automatically assess your face and your passport photograph.*

It is a system that needs careful feeding - the photos that are taken need to show your head to a nicety and there were a multitude of rules as to how you needed to appear to make the thing work. The Polaroid cameras that shot multiple images could do it  but the operator needed to be careful and there were special lighting circumstances that you had to set up to get it to work. Failures were frequent, mostly due to operator error.

Reel forward ( And how many of the younger generation have ever reeled anything...?) to now with a dedicated system called ID Station. It has taken out most of the misery from the business. We got one for the shop and have been experimenting.

The basis is a small dye-sub printer, a wifi card, a Nikon camera, and a Nissan flash. We still need to stand the subject in front of a plain white backdrop and direct the Nissan flash onto it as a wash-out, but the front flash can be as simple as the on-camera flash of a D300, D90, D7100, or D600. You simply frame the victim with a standard 50mm lens - and you use the camera in Landscape orientation - and fire away.

The wifi sends the signal to the printer. The clever program there has all the data for dozens of countries' passport requirements and it displays the face for your selected country to fit the appropriate criteria. If the backdrop is a little off it can automatically correct it. Once it agrees that the thing will be accepted it prints out a sheet of four of them. You can also ask for a certificate that insists that the images are correct, in case you need to argue with the woman at the post office.

The results are 100% on the ones taken at the post office - we recently took a picture for the passport of one of our staff members and compared it to a similar effort his brother had obtained from the post office...and I know which one of them looks better. Presumably they will both get out of the country this week, but it will be interesting to see if they let them both back in...

We can do passport pics right now for $ 18.95.

* If your face matches the photo you pass. If not they beat you until it does.

The 15-Second Wonder From Fujifilm

If you are the owner of a Polaroid ID camera camera, or the Polaroid instant back that mounts to a Hasselblad, Mamiya, or Bronica camera, you can score a cost-price bargain right now.

We have an embarrassment of Fujifilm FP-3000B Professional film packs. These have 10 shots each of an 8.5 cm x 10.8 cm size inside them. The film is ISO 3000 black and white instant type.

In this case it really is almost instant - 15 seconds from pull through the rollers to peel-apart. Super good contrast and fine grain.

The fridge is full of fresh packs - and we need room.They are normally $ 35 a pack but we're sending them out now for $ 28 per pack. If you need instant ID photos for your job site this is the cheapest you're ever going to see for film. Also good for low-light work.

Four Packs Of Fun - Polaroid Is Back

Edwin Land would be proud of the place - we have Polaroid instant cameras and film back in stock.

Take a gander at the pack shots. You'll note that we can provide a new Polaroid 300 camera and film - both the cameras and the film are in colour. Now your selfies can be in print as well as on everybody's Facebook.

Also note that there is a new formula for the Impossible Project films. We have 600-series black and white and colour film for Polaroid cameras as well as SX-70 film. We have been assured that the Dutch manufacturers have got it right this time.

If your dear old 600-series Polaroid has been sitting sad and lonely, perhaps this is the time to take it out of the cupboard and load it up. You could be 90 seconds away from art...

You Push The Little Bit Down - With Fuji

The image goes round and round.
Whoa - ohoh - ohoh,
And it comes out here...

Almost seems like that when you look at the retro styling of the new Fuji Instax Mini 90 - it is the camera that they call the Neo Classic.

Okay, It has got a secret - it is an instant print film camera much in the vein of the Polaroid  small cameras. Fuji make a film that is remaniscent of the small card-size Polaroid but since it uses Fuji chemistry the colours are a lot more vibrant and attractive. This is not ink printing or thermal dodgery - this is real instant miracle chemical processing. The stuff Edwin land did but with wasabi and a little pickled radish*.

The camera is black and silver with a finish that makes earlier offerings look like plastic toys. There is a powerful electronic flash fitted above the side of the lens. As the camera uses an electric motor to squeeze the film for development, this means that it needs a real battery inside. There is a Fuji NP45A lithium ion battery supplied and a mains charger to keep it topped up - how's about that for blended technology.

The film is Instax Mini - 10 shots per pack in a credit card size. As I mentioned the colour is good - in the film days a lot of us used the Fuji Fp 100C colour packs in our Hasselblads for proofing before shoots and we found it was far more accurate than the Polaroid equivalent.

This would make a great gift for a teenager - coolest kid on the block.

* Betcha can't take just...one... picture.

All Someone Else's Yesterdays...

Did goe to the Photographic Markets yesterday and was greatley amused.

As a stroller, not a seller, I was able to observe many things that have heretofore escaped notice. And a number of these observations have set in train essayable thought:

1. There is only so much valuable old material in any one area of the world, whether that material be Leica cameras or Vermeer paintings or old Soviet warheads. Eventually it will all have been sold to the Chinese, or the Dutch, or the Poles. Then the supply will dry up. After that the articles on offer will be Ansco 127 flash cameras, lithographs of Wave Rock in a plastic frame, and Holgas. Who will we find to buy these?

2. Just as there is no Eldorado, Tall Dark Man, or Shangri La, there is no secret stash of mint-condition Leica cameras and lenses that will be offered by a bereaved family eager to sell them for pennies.

3. " You can still get film for it" may be a true statement and may form the basis for a sales offer, but it should be accompanied by the other statements:

    " You can get the film from China by writing to them in their native language and paying 18 x the normal freight charges for it to arrive."

    " The film will have been made in 1975 as traffic-recording film and will be re-sized and cut to new
dimensions."

    " No-one in the metro area will touch it for processing. The metro area extends from Rottnest to the Great Barrier Reef..."

    " The film is made in a re-activated factory by re-activated workers. It is like watching a zombie video but each packet costs the price of a steak dinner."

4. If you wish to buy a secondhand tripod, remember that the quick-release plate will be missing and no-one will have another to replace it. Resign yourself to carving a new one from mahogany. It might be wise to purchase an old piano for the wood.

5. The cakes, biscuits, and coffee are really very good. Bugger the cameras - drift down the back of the hall and have breakfast.

6. Yes, that is the person you saw in the shop. No, that is not shop stock.

7. Load thee not the aged software into thy computer lest the viruses contained therein render thy equipment dead. Hope not for a magic grail that will make all thy images winners, for Lo, if the judges thought they were rubbish when they could see them clearly, they are not likely to change their minds when they are obscured by crude filters.

8. Buy a Bolex. Do not hope to run it any time soon, or ever, but buy it for the sheer art of its construction. Make whatever excuse that you need to at home, but have at least one on your shelf to cheer your heart.

9. " Buy a no-name studio flash system in a cardboard box? Pick it up and plug it in? Hold the head in the hand while you fondle the aged wiring and then fire it off? Why, sure! Go right ahead. I'll just be over here behind this solid wood door. "

10. How much for the two books? A dollar? Thank you, I'll take them. ( Sound of scurrying and chortling - in both directions. A successful sale. )

Uncle Dick

The Ugly Pet Syndrome

We used to get lies, misconceptions, and innuendos from our companions and relatives. Since the advent of the internet we can now be supplied with these by authoritative strangers. It is sort of like having Monsanto send you a railway car full of chemical sludge for free.


Oh, did I just use a lie, misconception , or innuendo to slander Monsanto? Yep, I did. And while it got a laugh, I hope, it was neither fair nor right. I use lots of things in my daily life that have been developed or made by Monsanto and I think I have benefited from it. My jibe was just me trying to be smarty-aleck.

So it happens with a number of photographic manufacturers. Based upon net reports - in themselves based upon people we have never met doing things we have not seen them do - we retail common wisdom of how bad this camera is or how bad that lens is. Worse - we sometimes reverse the coin and trumpet as good what we have never tested. You understand, of course, that I am accusing you of these sins as I am blameless - pure as the driven slush, am I.

The labels that brought you to this page have all been slandered, or lauded at one time or another - Mr. Fuji, Mr. Pentax, Mr. Canon, and Mr. Nikon get plastered all over forums. Mr Polaroid is wandering about somewhere in history. Mr. Edsel and Mr. Lightburn...well, read on.

The Edsel that you see on the top of this column is in beautiful shape - it was on display at Big Al's Poker Run in February - a hot rod event that is purely delightful. North American readers will recognize it more readily than Australians but both groups will remember little about it except its bad name. That name and the apocryphal stories are generally all that people know about the marque, and it is decried. But really, it is just a  Ford sedan of the same era - late 50's - with a stylish grille. The factory line that made it was a Ford line and there was nothing really different about the engineering. It fell out of favour because of the styling then every tale that was told of it exaggerated a fault and the whole affair became a sales fiasco.

But it is still a pretty stylish 1950's road locomotive and it is something that the current owner is justly proud of.

Contrast this to the car that used to be sold down on Hay Street just past His Majesty's theater in the 1960's. The Lightburn Zeta. The Zeta was designed to be economical to make, run, and maintain. It was going to use the manufacturing expertise of an Australian washing machine manufacturer to blitz the motoring world. Look out Austin. Stand back Hillman. Run for cover Fiat. It DID use all the expertise of an Australian washing machine manufacturer - had it been dedicated wringing out your delicates, all would have been well - as it happened riding in one in traffic wrung out your guts.

In retrospect, I do hope that somewhere there is someone who has treasured one of the few Lightburn Zetas that may be left. I hope the little plastic bread box has been lovingly restored like the Edsel. If only the show future generations what Australians were capable of in 1966. I mean, they display stromatolites in museums...why not a Lightburn Zeta.

The final wrap-up of this column, and stop hitting me with a rolled-up newspaper, Saul...is that there are a number of photographic devices, and programs, and concepts that get bad press in the electronic media. Most of what is thought of as common perceived knowledge on these subjects is flawed, if only because the people reading it have never tried the thing out. Here is where the on-line advice and the on-line shop go hand in hand. Electronic advice stimulating electronic trade in electronics. Sometimes right but oftimes wrong.

We're different here at the shop. The things we sell are right here. You can come in and set them off right in front of yourself and see what happens. You can run a card through the Flapoflex Digital 5 camera and see if the pixels match up. You can find out whether or not the flash actually works as the manufacturer claims. And you can ask someone real over a real counter about it. Of course the real sales assistant may be really confused too, but that just adds to the charm of the morning.

Polaroid is back with new ways to have instant prints.

As many of us are aware Polaroid 600 film has been in short supply and we can only speculate as to when it will be available again. However if it's instant photos you want there are other options. Like the handy new format Polaroid 300. Polaroid 300 works the same way as the 600 film before it, but on a smaller scale. The prints come in at 4.6 x 6.2cm which allows for a much smaller and more convenient camera also. Even easier to carry around your neck on social occasions when you'll capture great moments and have instant prints to share and enjoy.

Another great idea Polaroid have come up with is the new Pogo system of cameras with Zinc (Zero Ink) printing technology. There are two options here also. The first in is a digital camera with built in printer. The "Polaroid Two" is a very clever little camera indeed. With the ability to shoot a digital photo, just the same way your used to, then print it out in about 40 seconds. The Zinc technology means you never have any ink cartridges to replace, just pop in the film pack and your ready to go. The prints come out at 2x3 inches in size and with a peel off back to expose a sticky sheet.

But wait there's more!! Our mates over at Polaroid also have this cool Pogo Zinc printer. This nifty item lets you have the enjoyment of instant prints from any mobile phone with bluetooth file transfer capabilities. That's right, this pocket sized inkless printer will print your mobile phone images without any wires at all! Any dgital camera with pict bridge can connect via a cable to print instant photos as well. Visit our showroom at 240 Stirling St Perth to see these great new products for yourself.