Behind the Camera - Age

Here is a polaroid group shot from "Age" Shoot, If you look close I am the only one wearing colourful clothes in a team of plain black dressing people. . . And if you really look at the photo you will notice that my legs and feet are transparent like Marty McFly, and if you don't know who that is, then you're probably too young and you should get back to doing your homework!  

Camera: Mamiya RZ67 Pro II + Mamiya Sekor 110mm W

Film: Fuji FP-100c

So why my feet and legs are all back to the future-like? 
Simple: Since Mamiya RZ67 Pro II don't have self timer, I had to turn the room in to a camera, well not a perfect camera but a functioning camera. Mamiya RZ67 Pro II had the longest exposure of 8 sec. So in theory If I Prefocus the camera, turn all lights and modelling lights off and close the curtains to a level that it will block all major lights from outside source, and have the aperture set to something like F22, then the photo will not be exposed until I remotely trigger the Strobe Lighting, It should expose us like someone else take the photo. Against my best effort, the studio was not a complete blackout studio so the floor and reflective things got exposed a little bit by the time I run to the position and trigger the strobes. Luckily everyone was wearing black and the very little light that got in the studio did not expose the blacks by the time I got there! 

Recovering Negatives From Fuji FP100c Peel Apart Polaroid Film

OK! I must admit, this is due to my laziness that I am making a very late blog-post about this. 

While I was still in London College of Fashion, studying BA Fashion Styling and Photography(majoring in photography), I heard about the technicians and sometimes the tutors telling us this recovery method in order to get unusual effects on our photographs. Many of my class mates shied away from this method finding it complicated and many others just shot digital or stick with film but not polaroid. I in the other hand and perhaps two more class mates of that time, wasn't interested in this process because we wanted more colour accurate results, and thus nobody did this resulting a class of 60 Fashion photography students not seeing process or result of this method. 

But today I'm here to change that!

I came across a blog post about this recovery process while I was searching the web for the most affordable Fuji FP 100C since you can find them from £22 to £12. After carefully reading it from several blogs I decided to add my own input. 

For starters, you will need a camera which is capable of taking peel apart polaroid film. In my case I used my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with Polaroid back! 

So I asked my friend Lolo to take a photo of me! It was bit hard for her to focus under the influence of alcohol but I think she got close enough (no complains).

Shooting Medium Format Polaroid Back

It is truly a wonderful feeling for any photographer to get instant results, and Im not talking about tethering to big screen, chimping to cameras LCD or even the instants from SX70 and its new Impossible project "which has it's own beauty". Im talking about the Polaroid film made for Polaroid land cameras and Medium format cameras with special Polaroid backs.

In Colour and Black and White film there is only one brand left which still makes the film and every night and before I go to bed I pray to God *Flying Spaghetti Monster* that fuji not to discontinue *knocks on wood*
So What is so good about shooting medium format with Polaroid backs?

1. If you are only using film in the shoot, you get to see a preview and a reference to the light & photograph.
2. You get the full control of exposure since you are shooting with medium format. 
3. You can test different lights, exposure (ex: Lit backdrop, not lit backdrop etc...) and even multiple exposures without using your films, and get instant results. 

So here are the photos I shot and worked on from the last time I used Polaroid back on my Mamiya RZ67 ProII. 

Camera: Mamiya RZ67 ProII + 127mm 3.8

Fuji FP-100c

Team: 

Photographer: Bugra Ergil (ME)

Stylist: Zoe Springer

Makeup Artist: Maria Vez

Hair Stylist: Elettra Guggeri 

Male Model: Reece Harold @Premier

Female Model: Freya J Duffy @Premier