![]() The decision to make a wide format film was most likely to fill a hole in the market after they successfully sued Kodak for patent infringement and forced them to discontinue their own instant camera line (Kodak instant film had been a wide frame picture, instead of Polaroid's square frame, with dimensions nearly identical to what Spectra would be). ![]() Polaroid introduced the Spectra line in 1986 with the original Spectra System camera. Personally I’ve always loved the spectra cameras and so even now that you won’t feasibly be able to shoot with it as easily as you can with a vintage 600 or SX-70 model, they still look very cool on a shelf. So currently today, the only way to get film for it is to either modify your camera to shoot Instax wide (which I have no experience doing) or buying expired film from places like eBay but this is both expensive and a dice roll on efficacy. They cited a lack of reliability on the hardware of existing cameras and their longevity as reasons for discontinuing it and then made that change permanent by retooling their manufacturing equipment from spectra to Polaroid Go film. However, Spectra film is currently discontinued. It was discontinued along with every Polaroid film in 2008 but the Impossible Project did revive it. At this point it was actually still ejecting fine, but I grabbed a new (used) battery for my real pack.The spectra system was a series of Polaroid cameras that shot in larger format instant film called “Spectra Film”. Through testing, I noticed it went down to about 5.5v after a pack or so -with- flash fired each time. I used a pre-used SX-70 battery that was at 6.2v or so when I pulled it out of the old cartridge. So I removed the tape and just shoved the battery underneath then it was fine. ![]() The first time around, I tried to tape the battery in even using very little tape this was enough that somehow I triggered whatever mechanism causes the Spectra to run and try to spit out film continuously. Alternately, the spring might be catching on the print ribbing I’ll have to confirm. I might take carefully try and shorten that nub. I never got the adapter to reliably eject the last exposure even when using an old shot (or two) as a ‘bed,’to keep them from catching on the small nub at the front of the cartridge. Remember, test film and dark slides eventually become worn enough that they don’t work. Test the thing with old/exposed film before using real film mine required adjusting (flattening) the spring before it would reliably eject the film and dark slide. Definitely beats shoving 600 film into an old Spectra cartridge though :) but other than the poor framing and black bar, and without the wide frame, nothing really stands out as ‘Spectra’ that will make me do it too often. But as you can see, it’s pretty much the Polaroid Originals experience it’s nice that the camera can focus to some degree, has a few bells/whistles etc. I’ll probably do it again it’s awesome that these things aren’t total paperweights and that’s important. I wasted three shots total out of the pack of eight two described in detail below, and one my fault (I accidentally exposed the top film of one of the packs, when I tried to pull out the film to re-seat the battery).Īnyway, is it worth the effort of: 3D printing the adapter, cost of batteries/charger (or film if you reuse), time tweaking the setup, transferring (and possibly damaging) film to the new cartridge, and a possibility of still losing whole shots or having black bars or other anomalies, on a used camera that isn’t guaranteed to work in the first place? I’m not sure if the ‘tear’ at the top left is related to my handling and loading the film, or an imbalance of the rollers (since there’s no longer even pressure across them with 600). It worked! Evident is my lack of memory about compensating the shot framing- black line on the bottom is not my fault though. So I took random household shots, not messing with any of the switches or anything - like some weird, normal person in the late nineties. ![]() Sorry for the less than thrilling shots here I was excited to try it quickly, and wasn’t going to go out and do anything ‘important’ with a camera I don’t totally trust. ![]() I printed a version of the Spectra/600 adapter that uses SX-70/600 batteries, rather than the (impossible to find for me) 3.2v AAAs - Still waiting for those in the mail, but pretty sure both sellers I bought from flaked at this point. Not sure anyone’s given their full warts and all experience of using a Spectra adapter- so here goes. ![]()
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