HackSpace and MagPi are now one magazine. And in this month’s edition you can find my article about converting an old Polaroid camera to Fuji Instax film and adding internal leds to make the pictures more interesting (as if I need to do that). You can buy the magazine here.
We took the Light Leak camera to the Humber Bridge today and took some leaky pictures. The one at the top shows the original shot with no leaks. The one in the middle has “benefitted” from a single pixel yellow light leak. The one at the bottom got a blue light leak from the entire pixel row.
I’m very pleased how these have come out. I need to work a bit on the level of the light. It turns out that colours which use more than one led are much brighter (who knew?).
The first image came out completely white owing to too much exposure
Above is the first successful test of the leaky camera. I fired the LEDS in red for a tiny amount of time and was rewarded with a nice red picture. I’m pleased that the colour seems fairly even. Now I have to get the camera itself working and then I can find out what happens if we add this to an existing picture. Rather exciting.
The PICO on the side of the camera controls the brightness and colour of the led lights
What kind of an idiot puts lights inside a camera? Er, this kind of idiot (and also Fuji Film with their Instax Mini 99). I was converting another Polaroid Land camera to use Instax film (it’s a thing - believe me) and I wondered what would happen if I put some leds inside and exposed the film a bit with them. Well, today I built the first version. I’m using a PICO with a little LCD panel to control a row of Neopixels inside the camera. I’m not sure how well this will work, and what level of exposure is required, but I’m going to enjoy finding out.
I need to work out how to scan these pictures
We took one of our converted Polaroid cameras for a walk to the pub tonight. We took some pictures on the way and they came out quite well.
At least the camera photographs really well
Today we took our converted Polaroid camera to one of my favourite places in all the world, the gardens at Harlow Carr. We did get some pictures, but we need to work on exposures and framing a bit.
After the first part of the operation
We had a lot of fun today drilling and sawing. We’re following these instructions to convert some Polaroid Land cameras from very old Polaroid film which is no longer made to 5x4 and Fuji Instax. The procedure is simple enough, although you do need to be careful when using the drill (and it is best if you have sharp drills). You have to remove the back of the camera, along with a pressure plate assembly which used to squeeze the chemicals onto the photographs. You then add a 3D printed back plate along with a film holder.
We need to tidy up the tape we added to make the camera light tight against the 3D printed back.
We’ve got the back off the camera, adjusted the camera focus and fitted the new back. The next step is to change the “infinity stop” on the front of the camera so that it will focus at the correct place for the Instax Film holder we are using.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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