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Useful Photography Tip

Useful Photography Tip #12: Use an Old Polaroid Land Camera With Your Modern Speedlite Flash

Chris Gampat
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03/01/2012
2 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Polaroid 210 With Canon 580 EX II scans and photo (3 of 3)

As many of you know, we’re fans of film here at The Phoblographer. Pretty much every staff member shoots with film at one time or another and we have a real feeling that all of photography’s faces and mediums should be experienced in order for someone to find themselves and their identity. Personally, I’m smitten with my Polaroid Land Camera 210. But it’s limited in that I have pretty much no manual control over the shutter or aperture. In practice, that meant that I was shooting photos with some weird looks to them.

And then I decided to start using a flash. I’m smacking myself for not doing this earlier; as it’s so easy to use and will immediately improve the quality of your images by tenfold.

Editor’s Note: Thank you so much to my very good buddy Gabe Biderman for the Instant Film.

Gear Used

Polaroid Land Camera 210 (see our eBay banner on the sidebar if you’re interested)

Impact PC Male to Hot Shoe cable

Canon 580 EX II

Chris Gampat Hacked Beauty Dish

Fujifilm 100-C Land Camera film or 3000-B

The Process

First off, attach the hot shoe to your flash with hacked beauty dish. Then connect the male end of the PC cord to the Polaroid Land Camera’s PC female port: which is located on the front end of the camera not far from the lens. The lead image in this photo will give you a better idea.

Set your flash to manual output: usually anywhere from 1/8th to full power is necessary. I usually work with 1/4 or 1/2 power.

Cock the camera shutter, focus, and you’re ready to shoot. Ensure that the cable and the beauty dish aren’t in the framelines when you want to shoot.

Results

These scans aren’t the best, they were done very quickly on my friend’s Epson scanner.

I myself am also not the best scanner. I haven’t done it since college to be honest, but here’s my attempt.

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beauty dish flash fujifilm pc cord polaroid land camera speedlight Speedlite
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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