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Camera Corner & Imaging A Real Camera Store Miami


Image by Phillip Pessar
This store opened up less than a year ago. It has been years since there was a camera store in Downtown Miami. I bought a 2 pack of Flip Flashes for my Kodak Instamatic today. There were lots of second hand cameras for sale and a nice selection of Ilford film. They also had new in the box Fuji Instax Wides and Fuji instant integral film.

Vintage Canon Powershot A20 digital camera with 2.1 megapixel from the thrift store.

Fuji Butterfly


Image by Dominic’s pics
This image has had the colour values inverted from the original.

Part of a set of front and back views of Fuji Instax 10 mini film (credit card sized photos that develop in a similar way to Polaroid film), which have been individually removed from the cartridge and the black processing chemical squeezed out of the edge storage pouch, and manipulated using fingers and a spoon.

The resulting images were mirrored and (in some cases) further significantly post processed using Adobe Photoshop.

The results are coincidentally reminiscent of Rorschach inkblot test images. (These images are random and should not be used for any psychological evaluation. Still, you cannot help seeing faces and monsters in them!)

Because of the similarities between the Fuji Instax and Polaroid Instant Picture systems, Instax was not officially sold in some markets – by agreement between the two companies. Polaroid previous stopped Kodak producing instant picture cameras over patent infringement issues. Fuji instant film presumably has sufficient differences and innovations as to make the issue less clear cut. With neither side confident on the outcome of a legal fight over patent infringement, there was in effect a "mexican standoff".

Fuji Instax films and cameras are still manufactured and sold.

The fuji system also has the slight cost and materials advantage in that there is no battery in each film pack (unlike the equivalent Polaroid systems). Also, the spring system (that pushes the stack of photographs evenly to the focal plane) is split between the pack and the camera in the Fuji system, and so there are fewer disposable / single use components. The Polaroid spring system is completely contained in each film pack.

In normal use the film is exposed "in camera", and the processing chemicals evenly squeezed over the back of the exposed image (inside the film envelope) by metal rollers when the photograph is automatically ejected from the camera after being exposed.

In these images, the default white film should have been "turned" white by extreme overexposure when removed from the cartridge. (Any unexposed areas – shadows – would turn black.) The colours are presumably artifacts of the extreme over exposure and the fact of the development and fixing process chemicals being applied inappropriately and in very uneven concentrations, and also possible damage to the delicate layers during the physical manipulations.

All the "passive" instant photo development processes depend on diffusion and also presumably wicking to move the chemicals and dyes between the various layers that make up the film. The process is a "tour de force" of chemical technology, arrived at by considerable old fashioned trial and error.

One version of the Polaroid system – using SX70 film – was particularly sensitive to physical manipulation (for a short time) after proper exposure "in camera", and became the focus of a dedicated art / craft movement [flickr group]. The satirical artist and illustrator Ralph Steadman published a book of manipulated portraits called Paranoids.

In 2008 production of official Polaroid film ceased. The Impossible Project was set up by enthusiasts to resume production of suitable replacement stock.

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