Before there was digital, there was Polaroid. But this isn't a woeful remembrance of the past. I've been on the lookout for an inexpensive Polaroid back for the Hasselblad for a while. If you are unfamiliar, unlike traditional 35mm cameras that can only shoot one roll at a time, a Hasselblad camera can change the cartridge that holds the film at any time. This allows you to switch from shooting B&W film to color in a just a couple of seconds, and more importantly, allows you to go back to the first roll without rewinding and starting all over.

So, what's the connection? Well Polaroid and others made film holders that could mount on the Hasselblad and other "system" cameras that allowed you to switch films in and out. In the days before digital, this is how you got to see just what you were shooting without going to get the film developed. Or so I thought anyway. $10 spent at Hunt's, and some film, and I got to find out (it's amazing how cheap a Polaroid back is now - $75 easy just 6 months ago on Ebay).

I was under the impression that Polaroid, like any other film, had a known ISO (or film speed) that could be used to determine the correct exposure for a given scene. So, I could shoot first in Polaroid to judge exposure, then shoot film knowing I was going to be 95% correct. But, I was wrong.

All those professional fashion and studio photographers we used to see on TV shooting hundreds of Polaroids on set are much more sophisticated than I. They weren't worrying about the right exposure per se; they could get that from traditional metering. They were worried about the composition and lighting ratios. The aha! moment for me.

Because I am still at a point where I worry about straight exposure first, I had created a fiction in my head that said this must be what everyone else worried about, and therefore the existence of Polaroid. What I didn't realize is that Polaroid film must be developed, and like any other film the development can cause issues. Depending on the ambient temperature, the development time changes. This is a little of guess work as most people don't carry thermometers on them.

So, in a practical sense I don't think I can truly judge exposure with Polaroid. But, what I can get is a general sense of what the lighting is going to look like. The Polaroid becomes a guide, not a measure.

The first shot was taken after an averaging incident light reading. Obviously not an interesting lighting scenario. So, after 2 minutes of developing we were able to look at the film and make a simple adjustment. The exposure looked like it could work, but the way the light entered the scene wasn't to its best advantage. Eight inches backwards and we have a much more interesting shot. High art it is not, but it allows me to see how light could look on film.

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Sorry for the dust, there were real first test shots and were left on the table for a while - these are shots 2&3 out of the back, and shots 2&3 for me and medium format Polaroid. One interesting note - the polaroid film paper is a lot bigger than the image size of the film for the Hasselblad. So, as you can see in the first image (which isn't cropped) the picture area is a lot smaller than the film area. Polaroid made cameras that could use this whole piece of paper, but nothing specifically for the 2.25" square image size of medium format (or the much smaller 1.41"x0.94" size of 35mm film).

Next time, a more familiar topic: the Rhode Island Flowershow 2008 official photos which I shot a few days back. As for the title, I may end up changing it, I'm tired and find it funny.