Polaroid 180

I have been a film guy, and more specifically a Polaroid-film guy, since I was a teenager. One of my first cameras was a Polaroid film camera – and once I saw the ability to take instant shots, I was hooked.

I even worked myself up to be an official Polaroid artist, as the contract stated, in my college days – essentially an evangelist to your community that sang the praises of Polaroid’s product line and creative ways to use their films (e.g. image transfers, emulsion transfers, etc.).

I have a fairly extensive collection of cameras that I have used over the years from SLR and TLRs to medium and large-format varieties; with more film than digital but a wide gamut nonetheless. Within that collection is a subset of Polaroid cameras that I cherish, especially these land cameras with glass rather than plastic lenses like the Polaroid 180 Land Camera.

Now The Model 180 is a beautiful camera. with a 114mm f/4.5 Tominon 4-element lens glass coated lens that helos reduce reflections and improve image quality. The lens is coupled to an easy·to·use combined range/viewfinder specially designed and made by Zeiss Ikon.

The 180 originally used the Polaroid Land Pack Film: 3000 speed black and white, Type 107, and 75 speed color, Type 108 with eight 3.25 x 4.25 in. (8.3 x 10.8 cm) pictures. When Polaroid ceased production of this film, most photographers like me began using Fuji’s FP-100 and FP-3000B films. Sadly, those films are no longer produced as well but, thankfull, I have a cache of expired film that I am slowly working through and you can still come by some packs on occassion.

Luckily for those of us who still love these cameras, the advent of 3-D printing has enabled photographers to make a number of modifications to update it to use 35mm, 120/220 films, and even the Fuji Instax backs. Some of these are reversible and commercially available, so the lifespan of these great cameras has been extended indefinitely.

This particular 180 is a cherry model, with a good set of bellows, clear lens with no fog, scratches, or imperfections, boasting the close-up and portrait lens kits. These additional lens kits add not only a filter to the lens but also an attachment to the rangefinder for adjust for proper focusing for extending the capabilites of what you can comfortable shoot with it.

I have also added a sturdy camera grip with a hotshoe for external flash which is currently occupied by another vintage piece of equipment – an Asahi Pentax Super-Lite flash.

I will be venturing out with this camera more often now and will continue to share our adventures together on the open road. If you are a fellow vintage buff, please follow along.